


Invasion

by Flamingers



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Invasion, End of Humanity Scenerio, M/M, More plot driven than pairing driven, Xeno, alien trolls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-15 13:37:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1306780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flamingers/pseuds/Flamingers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a species of aliens called Trolls invade Earth, it looks like the end for humanity. They're incredibly powerful, difficult to kill, and have already taken out any force even close to strong enough to stop them. But when John Egbert's home is invaded and he's left working with a badly injured troll the two quickly realize they must both fight together against the inevitable to survive, or join the ever growing death count of the Alternian invasion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! First off I might as well offer the fair warning that this fic is much more plot driven than ship driven, and I'm going to try to work up to the JohnKat elements of this over a more reasonable course of time. There will also be smut at some point but not for a while haha.
> 
> This story was mostly the product of me really wanting a good fic with actually alien Trolls and well written JohnKat haha.
> 
> Also this is going to be pretty long. How long exactly I'm not sure yet, but I promise it will get where it needs to be, I will do my best to keep updating it, and I don't plan on trying to rush it. This will probably update each Sunday, barring IRL conflicts such as a ton of school work haha. I hope you enjoy the fic.

When John Egbert first heard that aliens had contacted Earth he let out a laugh, yelling back at his dad in the kitchen that his joke was very funny, and asked how much trouble he'd gone to to make the fake news cast look so authentic. He hadn't believed his dad when he walked into the living room, peering interestedly at the television, and told him that he hadn't made a fake news cast. In fact it took a good ten minutes for John to stop asking his dad how he'd done it, and another two to realize that the news cast was, in fact, very much real. He'd felt an exhilarating rush of childlike wonder when he realized the truth of the news being blared at him. Alien life did exist, and it had contacted them. The excitement didn't last long.

He and his dad ended up sitting on their couch together simply watching as the news reporter, a pretty blond lady who wore a strained smile that only really made her look a bit panicked, told them how earlier that morning a massive red ship had entered the Earth's atmosphere and had ever since been broadcasting to just about every system there was. At one point they changed their television to the channel the broadcast was apparently flowing through, and sure enough a dark gray, alien face full of wide yellow-fuchsia eyes, pointed teeth, and fins surrounded by inky black hair that seemed to move with a life of its own was calmly speaking to them. The broadcast was apparently repeating a clip of video over and over again, and they caught it near the end of the cycle. When it hit the beginning again she told them in a voice so full of harsh clicks and hisses that the English could barely be understood that she was the Empress of the Alternian empire, an empire so vast there was hardly a galaxy outside of it's reach, and that they came in peace.

Something about the broadcast made John's stomach lurch. Maybe it was the hissing voice. Maybe it was the smile full of razor sharp teeth set between fish-like black lips. Maybe it was just the utterly frightening alien appearance combined with that constant repetition "we come in peace" without any real indication of why they had actually come that did him in. Whatever the case John's dad apparently felt the same, as he didn't pause on the station very long, switching back to the news and heading into the kitchen to finish making the nearly forgotten dinner.

John continued to watch, slumped against his couch as the news reporter went on to explain that the leaders of several countries were currently trying to contact the ship directly, and a few had apparently managed to do so successfully. She explained that the American government was not, at this time, releasing any information other than that they had made contact, and that they were doing their best to figure out just what was going on. The news reel kept switching back to live shots of the massive red ship, floating soundlessly and completely still above the white house. John felt only the tiniest bit victorious about that. Dave had always said it was stupid when movies did that, focused on America like it was the center of the world and obviously the first place aliens would strike. If John were feeling a bit better he might have pestered Dave to laugh and tell him he'd been wrong. Right now he just felt horribly uneasy.

When his dad brought food out and let him actually eat on the sofa instead of forcing him to sit at the table it just made that feeling of apprehension grow. He didn't really feel like eating, but did anyways, slowly picking at his food as they stayed up watching the alien ship hovering over the nations capital.

 

oOo

 

Not a lot happened for the next three days. A bit of new information on the alien visitors but nothing substantial. They were apparently a race called trolls; strange, horned, golden eyed creatures with dark gray skin and pitch black hair. Most of the news was focused on cult-like groups of people who'd taken the news strangely. Some claimed the aliens to be enemies, some gods. For the most part, though, humanity didn't seem all that effected by the news that aliens had visited them, aside from taking it as an opportunity to pretend they knew more about the situation than the people around them. Most people were simply going about their lives with an ever so slight tenseness that made it clear that they were well aware of the newly discovered life floating above.

John spent a lot of time talking to his friends online about the Trolls. As much as he and his friends held a love of sci-fi the general consensus was that something about this just wasn't right. Rose was thoroughly convinced that they all were in terrible danger, and that they really should find some place to get to and hide. Her mom had moved the two of them to a nuclear facility beneath their house that connected to her mothers labs on the second day, Ms. Lalonde stating simply that she had very good reason to believe it was a necessary measure and refusing to elaborate more than that her job gave her a pretty good insight into the situation and it didn't look promising. She plainly and seriously added that everyone should find someplace safe to bunker down, and that they were welcome to come stay with them if they didn't have anyplace else to go.

Dave agreed, but tried to be considerably less serious about it, mostly joking "come in peace my ass" and rambling in a way that just seemed to broadcast how nervous he was. He became scarce after the third day leaving behind a message that he and his bro were going somewhere and he'd contact them again whenever it was "safe".

Jade's opinion on the whole situation boiled down to the fact she watched a lot of discovery channel and agreed with the general scientific consensus that any alien race bothering to visit the Earth probably wasn't friendly. She spent a lot of time talking about her attempts to figure out their technology from the video footage of it she'd managed to find, and about how she thought she might have an idea on how to bring the ships down if her theory on the mechanics behind their propulsion systems was correct.

Talking to his friends just started to make John more nervous than he already was. He didn't want to listen to warnings and battle plans.

As a kid he probably would have jumped at the chance to discuss such things, but being 18, and thus uncomfortably aware of how reality worked having started looking into college and moving out and paying taxes, all it did was make him a bit panicky.

John just thought everyone should lay low and see what would happen before doing anything crazy. He didn't try to stop his dad from making run after run to the store to stock up on essentials like toilet paper, bottled water, and food that would last a while, though. After all, better safe than sorry.


	2. Chapter 2

Nobody was surprised when the massive red ship blew the capitol and everything withing a good hundred miles of it to ash. Not really. The surprise came when there was not a single military response. There was no fight from the American military or any other military in the world. When the cloaking devices on the hundreds of thousands of smaller ships encircling the Earth dropped their shields it suddenly became clear why. There was no military left to fight back. The Alternian military had swooped in silently, swiftly, and taken out every military base it could locate all at once, and those that weren't already gone by the time the mother-ship launched it's blast were taken out the second they began to react, and thus revealed their locations to the waiting ships looming above.

That was when they'd launched their next major blow to humanity. Troll soldiers flooded into the cities and suburbs like ants, destroying and murdering everything in their paths. The guns people kept in their homes barely damaged the trolls armor, much less provided any actual defense. Even those who could get past the armor found themselves horribly overpowered. Trolls were large, brutal creatures, almost insect like, with tough skin stretched over thick muscle that all in all was incredibly hard to tear through. They were well trained, each military division well versed in the art of killing, and even without their weapons they had horribly sharp teeth, razor sharp claws, were faster than any human, and incredibly strong. Many even held powers humans had never before thought possible, crawling into their heads to find the hiding places of other humans, and using psychic power to level cities and rip people apart with nothing more than a glance. Many people even found their own pets to be their enemies at the hands of trolls capable of controlling them as well as the large white beast that so many of the trolls kept with them.

There were no prisoners. There was just body after body after body flooding streets red.

Humanity didn't stand a chance.

There were flukes, sure. Small pockets of people who escaped, who fought and somehow won, who ran, who survived. There were even those who were lucky enough to successfully hide.

John felt a bit awful when he realized he was very very glad he was one of those survivors.

His neighborhood had been mostly deserted since a massive explosion took out the factory that had served as the livelihood for most people in the area when he was just a kid. It was a small enough human population to be of little importance to the alien invaders. John figured they thought there was no reason to even bother with a couple scattered families in such a spread out neighborhood when they'd probably die by themselves eventually anyways. He was right only in that the logic severely postponed the trolls visit to his own home.

He and his dad boarded up their house, living completely inside. Apparently his dads freakish preparedness had been worth it, as they still had supplies to last after the first three months. They wouldn't last too much longer, no, but his dad was fairly convinced he could manage to make a quick run back down to one of the grocery stores nearby without being spotted.

John still had access to wifi somehow. He figured the trolls were probably making use of their own wifi system to help coordinate attacks or something. The self-sustaining generator Jade had sent him about a year and a half ago to replace the one they'd destroyed in a father son prank war worked well enough to charge a phone, and he still managed to keep in contact with his friends. Jade had been getting on at odd hours of the day and night, mostly just dropping in to check on everyone and share a few scientific findings she'd made that John couldn't make heads or tails of. Dave only got on in spurts, often at night, leaving long chains of red text describing some encounter or another or some road block he and his bro had run into in their trek across the country. They were apparently traveling in the direction of Roses house, fighting any troll they came across. John was just happy he was still alive and well enough to leave behind the walls of red text at all.

Rose was Johns most common text companion now, trapped in her home in much the same way John was trapped in his own. She and her mom were well supplied, working in an area isolated enough they were used to being stuck in one spot for long periods of time. She talked a lot about news her mom had received from scientist friends of hers about what was going on outside. They had made some discoveries from troll corpses they'd managed to drag back, but nothing that could help them much. All they'd really confirmed was that they were up against a horribly powerful enemy. Even under the layers of armor they wore, their skin was thick, and protected in more vital areas with some kind of chitinous plating that couldn't quite stop a bullet, but could definitely slow it down enough to be more of an annoyance than a death sentence. They could loose massive amounts of blood before dying, most of the bodies going almost completely dry before falling. There were even reports of trolls who'd lost multiple limbs still fighting well enough to kill a good number of armed people.

There was some hope. Scattered reports of militias building up, successfully taking out trolls in small numbers, taking small victories. Apparently they'd figured out that attacking a trolls neck was the easiest way to take them out, that they should fight in the day when the trolls had problems seeing as well in the sun, and more and more people were successfully fighting as more information got out. There were more survivors than John had expected, though not many. As silly as it was the reports calmed John down. They made him feel like maybe they stood a chance after all.

He'd been talking to Rose about some new discovery involving the trolls blood, something about the different colors correlating with their powers and skill sets, when he heard the cracking of wood downstairs. He jumped up immediately, typing in a fast "heard a sound gotta go" to Rose before sneaking to the staircase as stealthily as he could. When he looked into his living room he was met with the sight of three large trolls and his front door obviously busted in. They appeared to be just looking through his living room for now, but he knew well enough they wouldn't be harmlessly looking for long.

It was as he turned back into the relative safety of the hallway and pinched himself to make sure this wasn't just some horrible nightmare that he remembered his dad. His dad had been down in the kitchen. He was down there with nothing separating him from these three monsters. He made a quiet dash back to his room to grab the sledge hammer he'd taken to keeping there before returning to his look out by the stairs.

Looking at his opponents it was obvious they weren't in the least bit taking this seriously. Their apparent leader, a massive troll with big curved horns that resembled the sickles strapped to his belt, was apparently making some joke in their alien language that the second biggest, a thin troll with horns bent at odd right angles, was busting a gut over. The third troll still standing by the door, shorter than the other two by a good two feet with horns that were hard to make out in his mess of black hair, seemed to be the only one taking the situation even vaguely seriously, and even he was too busy starring with a look of vague disgust at one of the clown paintings in the living room to notice John at the top of the stairs.

Their lack of awareness didn't make John feel too much better about his odds of leaving a fight with these monsters alive. Even the shortest one with the nub horns was a good foot and a half taller than him, and all three were wearing thick armor, and armed with sickles that could probably take his head clean off with a single swing. He was about to just give up and head back to his room, maybe try to climb out the window and get around to the back yard to get his dad and run, when the leader let out a gross, growling laugh and bolted into the kitchen. John shot his head back around the corner to hear a crack of wood shortly followed by the sound of heavy footfalls running out the back door and away from the house.

John felt a surge of panic he had to quickly force down. His dad had probably noticed the trolls and run, he was trying to distract them so John could get out. John felt sick. His dad was strong, yes, freakishly strong for a man of his size and activity level, but John doubted he could take on the monster that had just followed him out, and he knew for a fact he couldn't outrun him.

And as John looked down he saw that the other two were still very much in his living room, skinny looking after their leader, and shorty looking exasperated, like his leader was some dumb kid who'd run off again that he was going to have to go chase down. John, in a fit of fury and stupid panic, convinced these trolls had just murdered his father, ran down the steps and slammed the sledge hammer as hard as he possibly could right into the shorter trolls face. It let out a low scream, nearly falling flat on its ass as it covered its cracked and bleeding face. Skinny turned back at the sound, only in time to just barely dodge a hammer swung at its own face. John knew the moment he missed he was dead. He wasn't fast enough with the hammer to get another shot before this thing took his head off.

The creature turned to John, letting out a hissing screech of anger, and drawing it's sickle before being distracted by something just over Johns shoulder. John was almost convinced his dad had managed to circle back around the house when the troll turned it's full attention to whatever was behind him, shoving him out of the way to stalk towards it, before he turned to see just what it was looking at.

The shorter troll, still slightly hunched over from where he'd had to stop himself from falling, was looking at skinny like he was looking into the face of death. He didn't even seem to care about the bright red blood pouring down his face from his badly broken nose. Skinny let out a bark of a laugh before speaking to him in their own language, more clicks and hisses than pronounceable words. As it did so shorty just looked more and more terribly nervous, even backing up a few steps. It was only when skinny pointed a sickle his way in a challenge that shorty took on a look of horrible determination, drawing his own weapons and growling out something John figured probably translated to "bring it".

John didn't know why these two trolls had suddenly decided to kill each other instead of him, but he wasn't going to question a chance this good. He ran. He bolted through the kitchen, out the crushed doorway, and out of his house. The trail the big troll had left behind wasn't the least bit subtle, and he couldn't see the end of it. John followed it, holding his hammer at the ready, leaving his house and the sounds of two trolls viciously fighting behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Karkat had never expected it to end like this. Well, when he was younger maybe, but when he'd managed to fool the drones, when he'd managed to fool the entire Alternian fleet into thinking he was rust and letting him join the threshecutioners, when Sollux had hacked him into the system so well, and even Eridan had given him a proper recommendation that got him into an invasion squad, well, he'd thought that maybe, just maybe he could make it. Maybe he could either live long enough to prove himself so that he wouldn't have to hide anymore, or die fighting aliens on some planet destined to fall under Her Imperial Condescension's glorious rule, honorably serving the cause. He'd thought maybe he wouldn't die at the hands of one of his own trying to rid the empire of his gruesome mutation. He'd thought he might actually get to be a fucking threshecutioner for one fucking sweep before being brutally fucking murdered.

He'd only given up a second after being found out before he decided he couldn't just roll over and let his teammate kill him. He'd been fighting too hard, too long. He wanted to live, he wanted to survive, and if it meant killing the quick-footed green blood in his squad before she killed him then he was damn well going to do everything he could to do just that.

When she went right for his neck he dodged back, taking on a defensive stance. He had to think about this. She was one of the better threshecutioners he knew, fast and brutal. Honestly if it weren't for her blood color being lower on the spectrum than big and bad humored she would have been the obvious choice for a leader in their squad.

He dodged another blow and took a shot at her side, trying to remember the fights he'd seen her in, trying to figure out a weakness. She'd always been very regimented. Very by the book. Karkat realized as he dodged her blows that he knew exactly which hit she was going to throw next. She had a system that was repetitive and easy to figure out. She was still fast, fast enough to nick Karkat even when he knew how and where to dodge, but he could predict her movements well enough to prevent her from damaging anything vital.

She managed to slice off a chunk of his armor as he tried to figure out just what the best method of attack was. The cut was deep enough to slice into his arm, and at the sight of bright red blood she yelled out a victorious,"Fight me mutant!"

He did the most unpredictable thing he could think up on such short notice. He headbutted her as hard as he could right in the gut, sending her back a few steps. His horns didn't do any damage, but the moment of shock allowed him a moment to knock her sickle out of her hand. She let out a furious growl before jumping at him all claws and fangs. He threw his own sickles away before she could grab either, deciding that if it was a fist fight she wanted it was a fist fight she'd get. She was still a formidable opponent even without her sickle, fast as lightning, and filled with the kind of platonic hatred that only came from being forced to work with two people you can't stand, but he was stronger, could take more blows, had more experience in hand-to-hand.

They both ended up beaten and bloody, she'd kept aiming for his broken nose and the section of chest that no longer had armor, using claws as opposed to fist, digging in a bit deeper, a bit more painfully each time. It was only the desperate need to live that kept Karkat from curling up in pain. She'd somehow managed to crack his ribs against some rough corner of this stupid excuse for a hive, and the blows to his chest were making breathing difficult. She'd managed a kick that cracked his leg bad enough he'd let out a howl of pain. He could feel his broken ribs digging into his lungs with each hit and breath, and the blow to his head from that hammer earlier had damaged more than his nose. His vision was swimming, and his skull felt like it was two sizes too small, his think pan pounding horribly.

He had managed to claw his way through two of the more major muscles on her left arm, leaving it dangling uselessly, and ripped off the armor protecting her neck. She'd been about to land a crushing blow to his chest when he finally saw his opening, shot upright, and sank his short but sharp teeth into her throat, biting down as hard as he could before ripping his head back. He was instantly showered in a spray of olive green blood accompanied by the most disgusting gushing sound Karkat had heard since that time his lusus came home with a blood sucking insect two feet wide on its back and he'd been forced to try to pry it off with a blunt practice sickle. Her body slumped forward, landing on him heavily enough to make him choke for breath a moment before knocking her off.

Assessing the damage Karkat wasn't so sure who'd really won. He'd come out alive, yeah, and he'd beaten her up badly before landing that lucky final blow, but he could hardly breathe, his head was throbbing, the muscle in his arm was torn so that moving it felt like fire, and even with his vision swimming he could see the bone jutting out of his grotesquely twisted leg. He coughed up a spray of his own bright red blood before painfully and slowly pushing himself so that he was sitting against the cracked, blood stained wall. It didn't take more than a few minutes for the pain to knock him unconscious.

oOo

John never did find his dad. The trail led down a couple of blocks and then abruptly ended in a small splash of red blood and a lot of gaudy teal that led down into a manhole nearby. John had tried to crawl down to see if his dad might be down there, but found it only held the corpse of the large troll that had gone chasing after his dad, battered and missing the top half of its head. He spent the next three hours looking around the neighborhood trying to find any hint of his dad, but the blood trail stopped just by the manhole and by the time it had fallen dark John had come out of his search empty-handed.

He wouldn't even try to deny that he'd started crying when the sun fell below the horizon and he still hadn't found a trace of his dad. Not a lot, after all he was pretty sure his dad was, at the very least, alive, but he was scared, alone, and worried that something awful had happened to him. With no real better idea, and the knowledge trolls tended to become more active at night, he went home, walking in through the still gaping hole where the back door had once been. He froze when he got to the living room. He'd almost completely forgotten about the two trolls that he'd left behind.

The skinny one was sprawled on its back, covered in brutal gashes all dwarfed by the massive missing hole in its neck, the apparent source of the flood of green still trying to absorb into the carpet. It was so obviously dead John didn't even bother giving it a second glance.

The second one, though, the shorter troll with the small rounded horns, was slumped against his wall, badly injured, but far from dead. It appeared to be unconscious, but it was letting out and taking in harsh, raspy breaths, struggling to breathe. John gripped the handle of his hammer more tightly, taking slow steps towards the troll. By the time he'd gotten within a few feet of it, it had yet to move or react, still simply leaning against the wall taking in rough gulps of air.

John knew the smartest move would probably be to just bash its head in with his hammer until the awful rasping breaths stopped, but it seemed pretty unconscious as it was, and he'd been so curious about these aliens ever since they'd landed. Maybe he could take just a quick look at it before killing it.

Not wanting to be too stupid he decided to test it, and prod it with the end of his hammer. The trolls breath hitched the tiniest amount, but other than that Johns subsequent pokes failed to gain a response. He decided it was safe enough to crouch down and get a better look at it.

It had a face that looked more human than John had really been expecting. Sure, he'd caught glimpses of these things and seen their empress, but it was his first time actually looking at one in person, and the resemblance to humans was almost uncanny. The skin was strange, deep gray and pore-less and spotted with black plates of what looked like hardened flesh. The proportions were off, but the mouth and nose seemed normal enough. It's top teeth stuck out from it's mouth awkwardly, too large to fit behind it's lips, which john noted were black under all the red and green blood as opposed to the gray the rest of it's skin was made up of. They were less pointed than those of the other troll laying on his carpet, but they still looked sharp enough to slice someone open. It's nose was pretty badly broken, but still recognizable enough that John could tell it would look pretty human when not bent at a painful angle to the side. It's closed eyes, however, looked like they'd be huge.

John looked down at it's body in anxious curiosity. It had some of its armor stripped off, as well as the cloth beneath it, revealing more gray skin, and some black plates of the chitin he remembered Rose mentioning. It had claws the same graduated red orange as it's horns, and legs that bent in a way that reminded John of Jades weird furry drawings, just ending in insecty claws rather than fluffy paws.

John had expected something more, well, alien. Despite the obvious frightening differences, its basic anatomy still looked very human. He'd been expecting extra limbs, and feelers, and maybe even wings (some of these things could fly, couldn't they?), and he just wasn't finding it. The troll still looked alien, but wasn't quite as far out there as John had been expecting. He was still pondering some of the differences and similarities when he glanced back up at its face only to be met with wide, bright yellow eyes starring right at him. He didn't even have time to let out a sound of shock before the trolls good arm shot out and grabbed him by the neck.

John let out a chocked squeak as the troll slowly and shakily sat up straighter, apparently surveying him up and down. It wasn't holding onto him too tightly, just tightly enough to keep him from going anywhere, and he found that even with it as weak as it obviously was his clawing at its hand was getting him nowhere. He'd dropped his hammer in surprise when it had grabbed him and found that reaching for it didn't do him much good either. The troll just stared at him, looking confused, and annoyed, and in pain.

After a minute of John clawing at its hand the trolls face took on a look of determination, and it slowly reached up with its free hand to jab at a button on what looked like a black metal choker around its neck, causing it to let out a weird kind of beeping noise. Then the troll took in a deep shaking breath and spoke some garbled series of clicks and hisses and hums interlaced with only vaguely familiar actual syllables. After he was done the machine around his neck started to speak in a strangely accented mechanical voice,"Hello Earth human, this is your new god and leader speaking. From now on you will be doing as I say, when I say to do it, and you will fucking like it or I will shove my fist so far up your waste chute you will be able to taste it for the rest of your sad, miserable excuse for an existence. Even injured I am stronger, faster, and infinitely more intelligent than you, and any betrayal on your part will be met with a slow and agonizing death the likes of which even the most brutal subjuggulators would find needlessly tortuous and gore filled. We are going to work together, as we both have a common goal, which consist of not dying in the most heinous manner on this shit ball you call a planet. You will lead me to someplace where neither of us can be found that is both safe and fit for not letting us starve to death. We will then stay in this place until I can find someone to come pick me up, and I will leave you alive to figure out how to properly save your own ass. Am I crystal fucking clear?"

John wasn't sure how to take any of that. He guessed it was kind of convenient that this troll happened to have some way of talking to him and apparently didn't want to kill him just yet, but he did not in a million years actually want to work with it. Trolls had killed most of humanity, this ones leader had probably very badly injured his dad, if not killed him, why would he want to work with them?

This trolls threats didn't strike him as particularly genuine. It seemed more like he was trying to cover his ass so John wouldn't just immediately try to smash his head in with the hammer. If this troll wanted him dead it would have killed him by now. Against all better judgment he didn't feel like he was in too much danger, and he guessed if he worked with this troll they could help each other. John knew the land, and this troll knew, well, trolls. Maybe if they teamed up they could actually both survive. Of course John would have to come up with some idea of how to stop the trolls that would apparently be rescuing this one from killing him, but he figured he could come up with something before they reached wherever it was he was supposed to take him.

Besides, this troll still had his throat in an unbreakable grip, it wasn't like he had a lot of choice in the matter.

"Uh, okay, could you please let go of me?"

The troll gave him a suspicious look as his translator relayed something in his native hissing language before deciding to release him, immediately reaching over to grab the bloody sickle lying a few feet away. John fell back on his ass, rubbing at his neck. He decided that reaching back for his hammer was probably a bad idea right now.

Instead he stuck out a nervous hand,"I guess if we're gonna try to work together we should know each others names. My name's John, what's yours?"

The troll looked at his hand confused for a moment before apparently deciding to ignore it completely,"John, why would I give a pungent whipping lumpsquirt what your name is? My name is Karkat, but that is irrelevant as you will be referring to me only as your leader, or maybe your god if you feel so inclined. Now, do you have any first-aid supplies in this white washed plaster fuckhole excuse for a hive?"

"Yeah, I think we have some upstairs, let me go check... Karkat," and with that John jumped up the stairs, ignoring the half-hearted growling he got in response.


	4. Chapter 4

Karkat regretted keeping the kid alive as soon as he ran up the stairs. Yeah, he knew he probably wouldn't be getting too far on an unfamiliar planet with a broken leg and ribs without some help, but why did it have to be in the form of some moron who didn't even really seem intelligent enough to have the common sense to fear him. He was a fucking deadly troll god damn it, he deserved some fucking respect from this weakling.

He decided to spend his short moment waiting for the kid to bring back medical supplies evaluating the damage that had been done to his gear in the fight. Thankfully it looked like the translator he'd gotten from Sollux was still working. That fucker probably knew this was gonna happen somehow. What an asshole. Oh well, it was letting him actually get through to this kid and his weirdly slurred, soft language. He could see his communication device was dead, sliced along with his hip it had been clipped over. Probably for the better. He couldn't really contact someone safe to come help him, but at least he didn't have to worry about someone not so friendly tracking him down either.

He didn't have a lot else on him. The small bag he'd been given to keep food and rudimentary supplies in was okay, thrown basically unharmed across the room. Not that it really mattered. All it held was a kit to help stitch up cuts, some water, and a few snack foods he'd brought along thinking this would be a pretty laid back mission and he'd get a chance to sit and just eat for a while. Helpful, but not exactly a game changer.

His armor had seen better days. Most of the plating and fabric along his arms had been lost in the battle, as well as the portion meant to protect the right side of his rib cage. The rest wasn't in great shape but was still in tact.

In annoyance with the stinging in his eyes, he pulled out the contacts that were meant to dull the bright red circling his pupils. He figured at least now he wouldn't have to wear those much anymore.

He'd started to look at his leg, feeling a wave of nausea roll over him at the sight of bone and still slightly trickling bright red blood, when the human kid came bounding down the stairs holding a pretty good sized first aid kit. He plopped down next to Karkat, following his glance down at his leg.

"Uh, yeah, I don't think I really have anything that can fix that."

Karkat grit his teeth, shoving himself into a better position to work, before snatching the first aid kit. He didn't feel too much better about his situation upon opening it. It was complete garbage as far as he was concerned, mostly bandages, disinfectant, a bunch of shit in tubes that looked pretty useless, and some small ass plastic things with fabric in between two sticky points barely large enough to cover a paper cut. No wonder this species was so easy to overrun, they weren't even intelligent enough to keep decent medical supplies on hand. How had they not all died off yet?

He pulled out some of the disinfectant, barking out an order to go get his bag at the kid. He figured he'd just have to clean shit out as best he could and stitch everything up.

The first thing he did was pop his nose back into place. He could tell it would still probably be crooked, but at least he could breathe out of it again. Then he set to checking his ribs, letting out a hiss of pain. They hurt like hell, and were definitely broken, but he could tell his body was working pretty well at pulling the bone back into place. They should be healed enough for him to start traveling in a few days.

"Thank the fucking horror terrors, at least not every bone in my body is making an attempt at killing me."

John wasn't quite so sure about that,"I don't know, you sound like you've got a couple broken ribs."

"And they are healing just fine. Mind your own business human," Karkat replied snappily, working at disinfecting the cut through his arm, before wrapping it in bandages somewhat clumsily. John, not knowing what else he could do, just sat and watched the troll work, occasionally glancing down at the trolls leg is morbid curiosity. What John assumed to be bone wasn't white like a humans, but the same orange color as his horns, fading to a yellow near the middle where it stuck out of the trolls leg in a shattered mess of splintered bone. Blood was still oozing out in a slow, clotted trickle and the skin was ripped badly enough it almost looked like cloth.

"I think you're going to need to clean out your leg before you set it back in place."

"No shit."

"I could, uh, try to do that for you while you keep doing what you're doing?"

Karkat looked up at him with an expression that conveyed pretty clearly that he was convinced he was looking at a mad man. He looked down at his leg again, overwhelmed with a feeling of queasiness at the thought of having to clean it out himself, and muttered a "fine" at the human. He never was much one for gore. Hell, he'd fainted that time he walked in on a medicarver surgical room by accident. If this kid wanted to pick chunks of bone out of his leg for him why the fuck not. He could always push him off if he fucked something up.

John wasn't really eager to start picking bone out of this guys leg. He'd asked mostly so he'd have something to do, but was starting to regret going with his gut instinct to offer his medicinal services. Sure getting to mess with an alien would be kind of neat, but Karkats leg still looked pretty gross. He decided to start with splinters that were obviously no longer a part of the main bone, working his way from big to small. Karkat had started up a low, almost inaudible growl as soon as he'd started, but John wasn't particularly concerned with it. He figured this probably hurt pretty bad, he'd probably be crying in this position. He glanced up at that thought out of curiosity, and was surprised when he found the trolls face streaked with pale red tears. He wasn't really expecting aliens to be capable of crying.

By the time Karkat had managed to basically disinfect and stitch everything up John had gotten a good chunk of the splinters in his leg cleaned out. This next part was going to hurt like a bitch, and he couldn't see too well what he was doing.

"Hey, human, do you have any water in this wooden mockery of a hive?"

John got up to go grab a jug while Karkat tried to steel his nerves. He knew how to set a bone, he'd done it before on Gamzee once when the moron had managed to get his arm in between the jaws of his own awful excuse for a lusus, but that break hadn't pierced the skin, and he hadn't been able to feel the pain.

When John returned he snatched the jug of water out of his hands, slowly pouring the water over the wound in an attempt to clean it out as much as he could as he ordered John to get the arm guards off of the dead troll. They were straight and sturdy enough to hold his leg in place until it healed.

When he was satisfied it was as clean as it was gonna get, Karkat set the jug aside and forced himself to grab hold of the two halves of the first bone. He was going to have to set each bone one at a time. Starting with the larger bone he pushed, forcing the bones back so that he could align them. The pain that shot through him stunned him for a moment, almost worse than the initial break, but with a determined screech of a curse he managed to force the bone back into place, jagged edges lining up as well as they could with pieces missing.

He felt like he was going to vomit, and pass out, and then maybe vomit some more. There wasn't a chance in hell he was going to set the smaller bone for at least a few minutes. With the way he was shaking and tearing up he didn't think it would be that great an idea to try anyways, he'd probably just hurt himself more. At least the kid had dropped off the arm guards and run off somewhere. Crying in front of a human was just pathetic in the worst possible way.

He sat slumped against the wall a few moments more before John came bounding down the stairs, a bottle of something in hand. He gently set it within Karkats reach, offering up a explanation,"It's painkiller. I don't know if it'll work on you, or if it'll help much if it does, but it's worth a shot."

Karkat was horribly confused by the gesture. You don't just help out the alien threatening to murder you unless you do what they say. You don't just do nice things for people. Karkat had no way of knowing this kid had stuff like that in his house, he could have easily just watched him suffer, the normal thing to do when being forced to work with an enemy. He could feel suspicion creeping up on him, eying the bottle warily,"Why would you give me pain medicine?"

John blinked, looking honestly confounded by the trolls hesitation,"You seem like you're in a lot of pain. I thought it might help?"

"How do I know you're not just trying to poison me?"

John thought on that a moment. He hadn't realized that handing a guy he supposedly hated some mysterious bottle of pills might not be taken well. After thinking a moment he replied,"Well, now that you guys broke into our house it's not really safe to stay here anymore. Other trolls are probably going to come looking for you, and there's a giant gaping hole in the wall. I don't really know how to sneak past trolls or anything, and I'm not a very good fighter, I kinda need you to help me survive here just as much as you need my help. As much as I may not like it, we're stuck, and killing you or giving you something that would just hurt you and make you mad at me wouldn't help the situation at all. Besides, if I'd wanted to kill you, you kinda can't move to well. I could've just grabbed my hammer as soon as you let go of me earlier."

Karkat gave him a weary glance again before letting out a defeated sigh. He plopped a few of the pills into his hand and swallowed them dry. As much as he still didn't trust this kid he already felt like death incarnate and anything that could even possibly help relieve some of the pain was a relief.

The pills probably wouldn't take effect for a while though, and he still had to fix the smaller bone in his leg before he could set everything properly. He tried to wipe the tears from his eyes to clear his vision, and still his shaking, if only a bit. He grit his teeth and with a quick, determined motion, managed to set the second bone with a growl of pain. He pulled out the stitch kit and did his best to sew the flesh around the bone back into place. The job was sloppy, he was still shaking, the flesh was mangled and hard to work with, and the tears had started to blur his vision again, but it was adequate, and Karkat was impressed with himself when he managed to get the makeshift splint functioning properly.

He felt like passing out. In fact he would have liked nothing more than for his big stupid lusus to carry him back to his recupercoon and let him sleep forever, but that was a wriggler dream, and he shoved it away. His lusus was still probably back with Tavros, who'd offered to watch him since he wasn't suited for this planet's atmosphere, and his recupercoon was just as lost as his old hive back on Alternia.

He guessed he could pass out right where he was, but he didn't want to fall asleep with the human kid right there. Besides, if he sat on this floor any longer he was going to be nothing but a mass of stiff, sore muscle when he woke up, and that wouldn't help anything.

He pushed himself up with his good leg and his arms as well as he could while moving his broken limb as little as possible, before hobbling over to the sofa, and gently lying down on it, propping his leg up on some of the strange cloth cushions. This world was so strange, so dead and lifeless. Nothing moved, nothing breathed. Everything was just stone, wood, and fabric. Metal computers, and plastic mainframes, it was stifling. So disgustingly sterile and unfeeling.

John was looking at him curiously over the back of the couch. Karkat just glared back. The staring contest went on a while longer before Karkat barked out a,"What?"

John flinched slightly, and responded,"I was just wondering what you were doing."

"What the fuck does it look like I'm doing, I'm fucking resting on this weirdly small, squishy couch after having to shove my own bones back into my body. Fuck off."

John frowned at him but left, headed back up the stairs. Karkat sat on the couch miserably. He knew it was ridiculous, and that it was probably the pain and misery talking, but he was homesick in the worst possible way. He wanted nothing more than to go back to his old hive with his lusus and just spend his days flailing around with his shitty wriggler sickles and yelling at his friends online. Hell, he'd take a few days ago when he had a promising future, and wasn't a fugitive stuck severely injured on some shitty planet in the far reaches of space. He knew damn well he couldn't go back with injuries like his. He frowned at himself, disappointed when he found he couldn't stop the tears from coming, and started to sob painfully. The sweet release of unconsciousness seemed like a blessing, but he still didn't really want to sleep. This hive was wide open, and he had no real means of defending himself, but those painkillers seemed to be kicking in, and he soon fell asleep in a haze of muffled pain and vague thoughts that he really really just wanted to go home.

oOo

John decided to let the alien rest. He was pretty sure they were nocturnal, and this guy had been up all day fighting, and bleeding, and having to shove his own leg bones back in. That and he didn't feel like messing with an angry troll, no matter how tired and injured he may be. He was halfway up the stairs when he hear what sounded like a sob, and was surprised when he snuck a glance back and found Karkat crying on his couch. He decided to head to his room when he heard the translator spit out a proportionally quiet "I want to go home". The last thing he needed was to be feeling upset about the troll who'd destroyed his home missing his own.

He checked the generator in the corner of the living room quickly before heading up the stairs, letting out a disappointed sigh when he found a sickle lodged in one of the more major components of it. His heart further sank when he returned to his room to find his phone dead on his bed, battery completely drained. Unless he found another generator he wasn't going to be able to contact anyone. When he realized he'd run off in the middle of talking to Rose and she was probably panicking he just felt even worse. He didn't want his friends worrying about him when they had themselves to look out for.

He fell face first onto his bed, suddenly too tired to so much as crawl in like a normal person. He figured he should probably try to sleep some, but his mind raced with worries about his dad and his friends and just where he was going to actually go with this troll that wouldn't result in his death. He didn't want to leave the house too soon in case his dad came back, but he also didn't want to stay here when other trolls would probably come searching. From what he could tell Karkat was just as nervous about being found by other trolls as he was, and he doubted his presence would stop other trolls from killing him. Why had the other troll started to attack him anyways? It didn't make any sense.

The only place he could think of to go that would be safe was Rose's house, but that was hundreds of miles away, and he didn't want to lead a troll, even one that apparently wanted to work with him, right to her hiding spot. Karkat had told him he planned on calling other trolls to pick him up. He had no guarantee that they wouldn't try to kill any human they found when they did so.

He eventually fell asleep thinking faintly that he had really ended up in a truly shit-tastic situation, and he hoped the trolls would at least wait until morning to send in backup.


	5. Chapter 5

John woke up with a headache, a growling stomach, and a crook in his neck. He blinked sleep out of his eyes, glancing at the boarded up window. It was bright out, rays of light streaming through cracks between the slats, the solar powered watch he'd never really worn and shoved into a hole in the wood read 8:42. He let out a groan and ran to the restroom before heading downstairs, stopping dead about half way down.

He'd completely forgotten in his morning haze about the disaster yesterday had been, and the sight of a dead troll on his floor as well as the large amount of red blood had startled him badly enough to make him squeak. He tiptoed around the massive puddle of blood on the carpet and looked over the back of the couch, finding Karkat still asleep, awkwardly pressed into the back on the sofa to accommodate for him being far too big for it. John decided to leave him alone, he didn't need a half asleep troll killing him, or even really yelling at him for that matter, and instead went to the kitchen. There was still the massive hole in the wall, but all the remaining food supplies were still there, and he found a box of cereal he'd stuffed in the back of the pantry basically in tact. He'd been saving it for a special occasion, it was one of the few decently tasty things they had, but figured he was probably going to be leaving soon anyways, and it didn't really matter if he started on it now.

He'd poured himself a bowl and was about half way through eating it when he heard one of the most god awful groans imaginable emanate from his living room. Karkat was waking up, apparently in the most painful means possible, and when John heard a loud thump followed by another groan he decided to go peek around the corner to see how the troll was doing.

Karkat was face first on his carpet, his broken leg still awkwardly hooked onto the couch, mumbling something in a half asleep slur. He shakily pushed himself up into a sitting position, careful to unhook his leg, and looked over at John miserably. He'd looked bad yesterday but today he could pass for belonging to the hoards of the undead, looking pained and confused. John held out the box of cereal in a peace offering and got nothing but a flash of the trolls middle finger and a look of annoyance in return.

He returned to the kitchen and was joined a few minutes later at the table, Karkat slowly limping his way over mostly leaning on furniture and the wall so he wouldn't have to put any weight on his bad leg. Instead of joining in the slow devouring of the cereal box he simply plopped his head down on the table and tried to breathe. His lungs still sounded awful, only clearing up marginally when he turned to cough up a good amount of blood on the fake tile floor next to him. Eventually he pulled out some kind of apparently edible bar that looked to be filled with a vaguely purple black sludge, and started slowly working on it, nibbling off small pieces at a time with just his front teeth. John found his appetite waning more and more the longer he watched, putting his bowl down completely when he realized the main make up of the bar Karkat was shoving down his throat wasn't rice crispies as he'd initially thought, but small, tan bugs, some still twitching in the honey they were being held together by.

They sat in awkward silence a minute before Karkat asked for water, tone surprisingly calm, which John decided to get for him despite it sitting only a few feet away. After drinking half a jug in one fell swoop he pushed it aside, and turned to John looking as serious as he could while still obviously feeling horrible.

"Okay, John human, we need to get the fuck out of here by tomorrow. We probably have today to get shit ready and figure out where the fuck we are actually going to go, but they will probably send a search squad after us by tomorrow night. We need to get food, water, some means of keeping warm and sheltered, weapons, all the first aid supplies you have, and anything else we decide we need as well as a way to actually get where we're trying to go. Does the transport device beside your hive function?"

John nodded,"Yeah, I'm pretty sure the car still works. We've got gas for it in the back, and the keys are probably in my dads office. But, uh, it's not enough gas to get us too far, and wouldn't driving a car around be really obvious?"

"Nobody is going to notice one, what the fuck did you call it, a car? That's a stupid name for a transport device. Nobody is going to notice one driving around if we only drive during the day and stick to less populated areas. Your car is white it's too bright to easily see."

John thought on that a minute before asking,"If you guys can't see during the day why were you guys breaking into my house yesterday?"

"Because our superiors are an insipid bunch of grubfisted douche-bags who love nothing more than watching underlings wander around blind like retarded wrigglers who can't tell their think pan from their waste chute. It doesn't fucking matter, we need to get ready and move. Where do you think would be a safe place to go?"

John hadn't quite settled that one yet. On the one hand he didn't want to lead Karkat right to his friends, but on the other he didn't want to just get them stranded in the middle of nowhere. As selfish as it was he didn't want to die, even if it meant putting other people in danger, and he blurted out the first thing that came to mind,"I think we could head to a friend of mines old house, but I'm not sure I know how to get there."

Karkat eyed him warily, this time speaking in less of a shout and more of a grating chirr,"I know you don't trust me. I'm not as much of a mindless unsympathetic shit pan as you're probably taking me for. I know you wouldn't in a million years actually think about taking us someplace logical and safe, because you think I'm going to heinously murder you or your friends. But I will say this. Even though I hate you, and your entire race, and the fact that I hate you and your entire race is as immutable a fact as unalterable as this writhing knotted hell of a series of events that have lead me to this sad and tragic point, it does not mean I have any reason to lie to you. When I say I will not kill you or any of your stupid human friends if you can help me get off this dead hunk of rock you call a planet I fucking mean it, and so help me god if you lead me to some desert hellhole you will go down in history as the stupidest living thing to ever walk the whole of space and time. If I wanted you dead I would have killed you by now, and if you wanted me dead you've had plenty opportunity to do it. There is literally not a single goddamn intelligent reason for you to spare me right now only to drag us both off to die somewhere on this hellish boulder slowly and painfully. Either lead us somewhere safe or just off me right fucking now because I do not even want to go through with the effort of slowly starving to death with your obnoxious pink fleshy ass or getting carved up by my own kind, do you fucking understand me?"

John blinked at him a moment, taking that all in. He guessed that made sense. It really wasn't too smart to have let Karkat live this long if he was just going to kill him. He figured he could probably kill him now. His dads car probably wouldn't get him all the way to Roses house, but he figured he could make it eventually.

Karkat just patiently watched as John got up and grabbed one of his sickles in the living room. He walked back into the kitchen, weighing the weapon in his hands. It was heavier than he'd been expecting, the metal made of something dense and unyielding, and he could tell even without the sharp edge it was a powerful enough tool to kill someone. He could feel a similar weight sinking in his gut as he stepped back into the kitchen.

John got to standing right in front of Karkat before realizing he couldn't do it. He couldn't kill him, even if he was a troll. It just seemed cruel. This was a troll who'd had a chance to kill him and hadn't taken it. He had a badly broken leg, could hardly breathe, and had started crying last night on his sofa about wanting to go home. The fact that Karkat had gone tense, and had started staring at him nervously the moment he picked up the sickle just solidified the simple fact he didn't have the heart to kill this troll. Instead he dropped the sickle on the kitchen floor, and stuck out his hand in a peace offering.

"Okay, I trust you, but if you betray me, or try to hurt any of my friends, I will find a way to stop you. I may be only human, but I can still fight you."

Karkat looked down at the sickle he'd just dropped in slight shock, before pulling a sickle of his own from behind his back, where he'd apparently shoved it into his belt, and dropped it on the floor to join the other. He then reached out and actually took John's hand, jumping a bit when John shook it.

"Good, no more bullshit trust issues, and needless dramatic fucking about."

John gave a grin and pulled his hand back, amused to realize that the trolls skin felt like a cats tongue.

"Hey, Karkat?"

"What?"

"Why did you have that sickle behind your back?"

The troll shot him a look like he thought he was stupid,"John, do you honestly think I spent so much time yesterday fighting a member of my own squad, shoving my own bones back into my body, and going through one of the most painful experiences in my entire short life just so you could kill me? If you had tried to take a swing at me I would have sliced you open and let you bleed out on the floor, but, since you're being reasonable and agreeing to trust me, that's not going to be necessary, and I now know I can trust you as well."

John just kind of nodded. It made enough sense as harsh as it sounded. He was a bit confused about one thing though.

"How old are you?"

"I am 9 sweeps old, why do you care?"

"No, like, in Earth years?"

"Human, what makes you think I know what a year is?"

"Okay, let's put it this way, are you considered an adult?"

"Yes, of course, they don't let little baby wrigglers who poop their pants into the Alternian military. Especially an esteemed sector such as the threshecutioners. You're initiated into your designated post when you go through your final molting and reach true adulthood."

John decided to ignore that molting comment,"And, uh, how long have you been an adult?"

"Not long. This is my first actual assignment."

"Huh, I thought you were older. I guess that makes sense though, you're a lot shorter than the other trolls I've seen."

Karkat growled at him half-heartedly,"Fuck you. I am a completely reasonable and normal height, it's not my fault everyone else is freakishly tall."

John just laughed,"It's okay, I'm considered kinda tall for a human, and you're taller than me. You can be a short alien, I'm not gonna make fun of you."

Karkat didn't even bother responding, choosing to throw the cereal box at his head instead. John just threw it back, before running out of the kitchen. He figured if Karkat changed his mind about not wanting to murder him he had to catch him first.


	6. Chapter 6

Once Karkat found John hiding in the living room and smacked him with a pillow the two got to work preparing to leave. In the end the two ended up doing pretty equal amounts of work, Karkat moving slowly due to his injuries, and John stopping every few minutes to go make sure his dad hadn't wandered home. Karkat eventually caught on and informed him plainly that if his "lusus" had managed to kill his squad leader, and hadn't left behind a trail of blood thick enough to follow he was probably fine. There weren't any other patrols in the local area, and as long as he hadn't wandered off too far, and he was smart enough to hide at night he should be okay. Besides, if he did come back he was pretty sure he would just walk in, and there was no reason to keep checking. Karkat still didn't try to stop him from looking, though.

It took most of the day, but by sundown they'd managed to pack the car with all the supplies they could think to bring, and found enough gas cans in the garage John predicted they'd be able to get about half way there before running out. John didn't argue when Karkat insisted they wait until the next morning to set out. Driving at night was an insanely stupid idea.

John knew he needed sleep. He was about to set off on an incredibly dangerous trek across the country that was probably going to involve either the robbery of a gas station, the theft of a car, or a lot of walking with a guy who still needed the support of a wall to get around. Karkat had said troll bones heal fast, but he doubted it would be fast enough. There was the chance they could run into hostile trolls, and he'd have to be ready to fight them off, as Karkat probably wouldn't be much help for a while. He also didn't know how long the food he had brought would last or if Karkat could even eat it. His one attempt at eating human food earlier that day had ended in him turning a weird reddish color, and complaining about feeling like his insides were trying to become his outsides for a good three hours.

It didn't help that every time John laid down in his bed he was hit with the realization it could be his last night ever sleeping there. Every time he closed his eyes he realized it could be his last time seeing this house he'd spent his entire life growing up in. What if his dad came back after he'd gone? What if his dad came home at night and saw the troll sleeping on his couch and assumed John wasn't there? That thought alone was enough for him to keep wandering downstairs every ten or so minutes.

Karkat wasn't having an easy time getting to sleep either, mostly due to the fact his brain was screaming at him that you slept in the day not at night, and even though he was exhausted and knew it was just John the sounds of someone walking around made him nervous enough he couldn't force himself asleep. Not to mention he feared the nightmares he knew would come without the aid of a layer of sopor over his head.

By about the sixth time John wandered down the stairs, Karkat had given up on sleep entirely, and sat himself up to check through his injuries and rethink the plan for getting someplace safe without getting murdered or dying in some other magnificently stupid way. He was relieved when he realized his ribs were, in fact, healing. The flesh around them had completely closed up at the very least, and the muscle holding everything in place made sure he was breathing a bit easier even if every expansion and contraction of his ribs still felt awful. Most of the more minor cuts were doing well too, but his arm was still too painful to move more than very slowly, and he could tell his leg wasn't healing properly. The flesh around it should have at least started to close up by this point, but it was the same gross, poorly stitched back together wound it had been the day before.

He realized with a sinking feeling that his body was probably throwing a fit over not getting enough to eat. He'd been working off military meal blocks drowning in so much nutrition his body probably didn't have use for it all. Now all he had was the one other snack bar he hadn't eaten that morning and whatever human food he could force down. Not nearly enough to rebuild a leg. Honestly he was surprised his body had managed to fix his ribs as well as it had so far.

The memory of a story Vriska had told him once came to mind. Something about how in days before the military had figured out how to store such high nutrition value foods, and when fresh foods were hard to come by in deep space, platoons low on sustenance had started to eat their dead, and sometimes even their weaker members. She'd said it worked even better than the nutrition blocks a good deal of the time. Karkat sent a weary glance back at the dead body both him and John had refused to move, before shaking his head in an attempt to get rid of the thought. He wasn't some deep space highblood headcase. He tried to squash out the hungrier part of his mind whispering that it wasn't really any different than eating grub sauce.

When John next wandered into the living room he found Karkat partially leaning over the back of his couch, starring down almost contemplatively at the dead troll. John suddenly felt bad. That troll had been a teammate of his hadn't it? And it had attacked Karkat and he'd been forced to kill it. That had to suck, he knew he'd feel bad if he had had to kill someone he worked with, even if he didn't like them much.

He walked over and waved a hand in front of Karkat's face, making him jump,"Hey, Karkat, are you okay?"

The troll blinked at him a moment before relaxing back into a grumpy expression John had the distinct impression was just the way his face naturally fell,"I'm fine."

"What are you doing?"

"Contemplating what the fuck I'm going to be eating on this sad and depraved excuse for an adventure we're going to be so merrily going on tomorrow."

John realized he was probably putting more faith in Karkat's caring for his teammate than was really deserved as he sent a weary glance his way,"Uh, why are you starring at the dead body thinking about food?"

Karkat frowned pointedly,"No reason that's any of your business. Why the fuck are you scrabbling around your human house like a cluck beast that's had its head removed for the sake of ending its short and miserable existence only to be sent off to be deep fried and eaten by some fat fucking sweat dripping oink beast?"

John moved to go sit beside Karkat on the couch shrugging,"I don't know. I guess it's just kind of hitting me that I'm probably never going to come back here again. I've lived here my whole life, I can't really imagine never seeing this place again. That and my dad's still missing. What if he comes back and finds the house empty and assumes I died?"

Karkat really didn't want to care about this humans problems, he had enough of his own to worry about, but he could sympathize with the weird feeling of knowing you were never going to see the house you grew up in ever again. He'd gotten over his lost wriggler hive pretty quickly but it still hadn't been fun walking through his half-empty house and realizing he was never going to see it again.

Karkat turned so that he was actually sitting on the sofa instead of leaning over the back of it and glared at a harlequin doll sitting on a shelf below the television,"You'll get over the house eventually. You might get nostalgic about it, but it's really not a big fucking deal. Being out running from aliens will keep your mind off it pretty well. As for your dad, I think he'd probably take the hint of a dead troll and your nonexistent corpse to mean you're doing just fucking peachy."

John was surprised the troll was bothering to try and offer him some sort of comfort with the situation, and ended up thinking on that a minute before asking carefully,"Do you ever miss the place you grew up in?"

Karkat really did not want to talk about this with a human, it was embarrassing, but he figured the odds of anyone else ever knowing were slim and none, and who really cared what this human thought of him,"I did when I first left off, and I still do sometimes even now. Then again I think any sane intelligent being would rather be at home than in an alien shit-hole with no food and enough broken bones to earn a spot in a gore magazine."

"Do you have any parents you miss?"

"What are parents?"

John assumed it was probably more of a fault in translation than Karkat genuinely not knowing what parents were. He opted to casually explain in different terms,"The people who gave birth to you and raised you. Like my dad. We call them parents on Earth."

Karkat looked at John a bit oddly a moment before scrunching his face in distaste,"Eww, I forgot you're all filthy fucking mammals. No I don't have an ancestor who took care of me in some depraved non-quadrant familial mockery. I had a lusus like any respectable and proper Troll would. He's safe with a friend of mine right now."

"Well, do you miss him?"

Karkat glanced at the cold, dead white ceiling, remembering vaguely that his own hives main room had a massive, poorly patched-together gouge where his idiot lusus had gotten it into his head that jumping on the sofa was a good idea and ended up impaling the ceiling with the spikes along his spine,"Yeah. Yeah I do."

There was a lull in the conversation for a moment, where Karkat simply seemed to be starring in to space and John wasn't sure there was much to add. After a moment he caught another glimpse of the green blood splattered across his living room, and decided now was as good a time as any to ask.

"Hey Karkat?"

"What?"

"Why did your, uh, teammate, why did she attack you?"

Karkat shot John a glance like he was stupid before coming to the realization that this human wasn't familiar with the caste system. He'd figured humans had figured that out by now. Then again, this one had been just kind of hiding out in his house. But what if humans hadn't figured it out yet? They'd be at an even more severe disadvantage in fighting if that was the case, and while Karkat was now a fugitive he wasn't about to betray his empire. He respected and served his empress, cared for his empire, wanted nothing more than for his race to continue their sweeping victory in taking over the vast reaches of the universe. He couldn't give this kid information that he might later share with someone who could actually use it against them. He thought a moment before settling on being as vague as possible.

He let out a put upon sigh and started to explain,"Trolls are each born with one of a set of blood colors your genetics can code for. As far as normal genetics are concerned my blood color doesn't exist. I'm a mutant, and mutants are an unacceptable blight on the empire. A risk. My teammate saw my blood color wasn't the acceptable color I had been successfully pretending mine was when you hit me with that hammer. She was just doing what any good Alternian would do, and tried to eradicate the risk to the empire."

"Wait, you're telling me your teammate tried to murder you because your blood color isn't normal? That's it? That's stupid!"

"It's not stupid, it's common sense. You want your people to be healthy? You want only the best for your population? You want to prevent any uprisings, and maintain the social order your empire relies on? You erase any outliers. You destroy the glitches and faults. You eradicate anything that poses a threat, and you do it swiftly and mercilessly. That's just the way things are. The empress is a brilliant leader, and even being someone the system actively fights against I can respect her and the amazing empire she's built. Ruthlessness like this is what allowed the empire to grow to the magnificence and size it's at. If some poor mutant bastards have to get culled every once in a while to support that, then so be it."

It made John's stomach turn. He understood the logic, but that didn't make it any better. The conviction Karkat spoke with, the idea that you could just kill anyone who _might_ pose a threat, the fact his own teammate had tried to kill him just because of a difference in blood color, it all bothered him. It reminded him of old books about dystopian societies, stories of leaders and governments gone corrupt with power. He eventually decided to drop it. It wasn't worth arguing about, and he didn't really want to piss Karkat off. If anything he was feeling pity towards him, not at all like he wanted to fight.

He instead asked Karkat about what a lusus actually was. The next hour and a half was spent with Karkat explaining in gory detail how the lusus system worked, and why it was vastly superior to John's "perverse human mammalian family fuck fest". He wasn't aware that Karkat was pointedly neglecting to inform him that the white beast so many trolls were accompanied by were, in fact, lusi.

While John actually found a lot of the new information fascinating he was more tired than he gave himself credit for, and Karkat wasn't faring much better. They eventually fell asleep on the couch, John lightly snoring in a sitting position and Karkat half falling off.

The next morning Karkat awoke first, somewhat surprised to find he hadn't experienced any nightmares, and shook John awake when he finished taking care of a few last preparations himself.

Even in his morning haze John knew better than to remark on the distinctly bloody green now staining Karkat's hands, lips, and now not-so-mysteriously full pack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I follow the headcanon that the trolls nightmares are induced through kind of general wide-range chucklevoodoos, and thus Karkat isn't going to be having nightmares on this planet where nightmares would only really hinder the parts of the army that have to spend a few nights on the ground.
> 
> I'd also like to take a moment to say thank you to those of you who've expressed you like the story so far! Seriously, it's awesome knowing you guys are reading and enjoying it. If any of you have questions about anything feel free to ask them. Also, feel free to message me if anything looks awkward, or if I failed to pick up on some spelling or grammar mistake. Haven't had a lot of time to edit lately haha.


	7. Chapter 7

John had to help Karkat get into the car. The troll couldn't maneuver himself into the passenger seat without hurting his leg, partly because he had to kind of hop into the car, partly because his arm was still damaged and it kept giving out when Karkat attempted to use it as leverage to support himself, and partly because even with the sun blocking goggles he had he really just couldn't see in the daylight, but mostly because he was simply far to big for the car. John's car, his dads old '98 Escort -passed down on his seventeenth birthday as he'd been deemed incapable of driving anything more than two feet without crashing on his sixteenth- wasn't excessively small, but it wasn't exactly built for a giant hulking alien either.

After nearly fifteen minutes of struggling, and Karkat having to stop several times to make a high pitched whining noise and clutch gently at his leg, John managed to force the seat back, reclining it as far as their somewhat well stocked back seat would allow, and gotten Karkat to fit in the car. It was awkward, and John knew they'd have to at least try to find a better solution at some point, but it would work for the time being.

John's motion to climb into the driver's seat was a much shorter and much less painful process, but it still took a good few minutes to get the car rolling. John's nerves were creeping up on him. He knew Karkat knew better than him how likely they were to be spotted and caught. Logically he knew that Karkat wanted to not be caught as much as he did and that he would speak up if they were in any kind of danger, but it didn't change the fact that the part of John's brain that had been forcing him into hiding-to-survive mode since the invasion started was screaming at him that this was an absolutely awful idea. It took Karkat yelling at him to "HURRY THE FUCK UP AND START THE TRANSPORTATION DEVICE OR SO HELP ME-" for him to actually pull out of his driveway, send a final parting glance his childhood home's way, and drive off towards Rose's house.

Getting lost wasn't too big of a concern of John's. He knew the general direction, he'd driven there before, and he knew how to avoid populated areas pretty well, but he also knew he'd have to jump on the highway at some point, and the prospect of doing so worried him. He spent a good portion of the day making detours to avoid areas he knew would now be crawling with trolls, and desperately avoiding major roads.

It was a quiet drive. Karkat insisted on it, stating he wanted to be able to hear if something was nearby. John knew talking would probably calm him down, but he figured letting Karkat keep watch was much more likely to prevent them from being killed. They'd stopped twice to refill the cars gas tank, as well as eat something quickly, Karkat shoving his food in his mouth before John had a chance to get any reasonable look at it, and drink a bit of the water they'd brought. The most conversation that went on was a quick talk about how their supplies levels were doing, and what they would need to find along the way.

At one point in the afternoon, a few hours before sunset, Karkat had suddenly spoken up, telling John in a harsh whisper to pull over under the bridge ahead and stop the car.

John had looked over at him oddly, somewhat on edge at Karkat suddenly snapping out of the borderline catatonia he'd been in most of the ride,"Why? Is something wrong?"

"Shut up, just fucking stop the car, I can hear a ship," Karkat snapped back at him, sitting up a bit to glance out the window. He still couldn't see well. While the cheap goggles he'd been issued saved his eyes from being scorched out of his skull in the daylight, they also blocked him from being able to see most things clearly. Even so he thought he caught a glimpse of something moving in the distance as they finally pulled under the overpass they'd been driving towards.

As soon as John turned off the car he realized he could hear the ship too; the cracking of electricity, a fairly faint sound, but there none the less. He slid further down in his seat, trying to stay as quiet and still as he could. He could tell that the sound was far off, but he didn't want to risk it. Karkat, meanwhile, was still looking out the window, listening hard for the ship. He kept watch even as the sound eventually faded into a heavy silence.

After a few minutes of listening for the sound of any ship to return, Karkat spoke up, still very quietly,"It's gone. Can't hear it anymore. It was probably a simple transport ship, they're the only ones that are that loud. They can't see, just run on a pre-programmed course, so we probably weren't noticed, but we still need to get the fuck out of this area."

John couldn't agree more as he nodded, and carefully started back on the road again, nerves frazzled enough to keep him almost painfully aware of everything around him for the last stretch of the days drive. He decided to stop for the night before the sun had a chance to start setting, figuring that it was better to be safe than sorry. He found a small gas station out in the middle of what was basically nowhere, parked the car, and helped Karkat out of his side. John spent a few minutes trying to pick the lock on the gas station door before Karkat got tired of standing there and punched the glass door out with his good arm. John had promptly informed him he was no fun, and the two hurried inside.

The station was fairly pristine aside from the layer of dust over everything, and the smell of rot in the air where food had gone bad. It made sense. This gas station was in the middle of nowhere, and there hadn't been much time after the invasion started to loot anything even if it had been near a populated area. There hadn't been time for the panic and herds of mass hysteria to set in because everyone had woken up to find the rest of humanity either dead or dying. John realized it was probably why he was able to drive down the roads without running into other cars, and why he was getting his pick of anything he wanted now, and the thought made him horribly sad.

The first thing he did was hop over the counter and start searching to see if there was a cell phone that may still have power sitting around anywhere. He knew it was a long shot, but he had to at least check. He wasn't surprised to find nothing of the sort behind the front counter, but after searching the one back room in the building, a small office with a computer that was probably as old as he was, he found something a good deal better.

There was an emergency generator shoved into a corner of the room, covered in a layer of dust so thick John figured it had probably already been long forgotten by the time the gas station was abandoned. He immediately rushed over to it to see if it still ran, and was elated when he revved it up and was greeted with the loud, obnoxious sound of success. He rushed over to the bag he'd brought in with him for the night and pulled out his phone and charger, plugging them in.

He was practically bouncing with impatience as his phone registered that it did, in fact, have power now, and started its slow start-up process. He was overjoyed to find that the pesterchum function on his phone could still connect, and was immediately inundated with a mass of messages from Rose, Jade, and Dave, none of which were currently online. John didn't know how long the generator could run for or how much fuel it had left and so he opted to contact Rose first, scanning quickly over her panicked messages before sending a quickly typed message of his own.

He first let her know that he was okay, and that he hadn't been murdered just yet. He let her know that his dad was still missing, and was about to type to her that he was heading her way when he heard Karkat shuffling around in the main store behind him and was reminded of the fact he was traveling with a Troll.

He had to tell Rose. He couldn't just lead a Troll to her house without even letting her know or asking if it was okay. That would be betraying her trust, and he realized he couldn't put her in danger without even bothering to talk to her about it.

He decided he'd be honest with her, first typing out the generals of the situation he'd gotten himself into, and then going into more detail when he realized his phone battery would hold out for him. Somewhere along the line Karkat had wandered in with a stick of beef jerky still in the wrapper shoved in his mouth, and asked what he was doing. When he told him he was talking to a friend Karkat had just shrugged and let him know he was going to lay out one of the blankets they'd brought and go to sleep, before limping back out of the office. He spent enough time typing away for the sun to set and Karkat to nearly fall over several times. John finished up with asking Rose what she thought of it all, and sending a message to Jade and Dave before letting his phone simply charge for a while and going to head to sleep himself.

He left the back room and found Karkat curled up in a back corner behind the counter. John decided Karkat had the right idea sleeping somewhere where they couldn't be seen easily from outside, and set up the sleeping bag he'd brought with him a few feet away from where Karkat had set up his sleeping spot. He caught a glimpse of Karkat looking back at him, bright gold and red eyes starring at him from the dark corner he had shoved himself into. Karkat blinked up at him in an expression that looked a lot like surprise, before asking,"Why are you sleeping next to me?"

John shrugged, zipping up the ghost busters sleeping bag he'd had since he was a kid. It was a worn out relic, but it had been the best he could find in his house.

"I dunno, it seems smart to sleep behind the counter, and sleeping close together could be safer."

"Why are you trusting me to not hurt you?"

John gave him an odd look, answering,"Uh, Karkat, it wouldn't make any sense for you to hurt me. We're in this together now even if it isn't the best situation, and if you wanted to kill me you would've done it by now. Besides we fell asleep next to each other last night didn't we? It's not a big deal."

Karkat peered back at him with wide, too large eyes for a moment before pulling his blanket over his head and curling up as much as his injuries would let him. He didn't know how to deal with this human. He was trusting him. He was nice. He was way too nice, and trusting him way too much. Nobody treated anybody else like this unless they pitied them and that thought alone was enough to confuse the hell out of him.

John offered him a,"Good night Karkat," before rolling over to sleep.

Karkat really didn't know how to take that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry is this chapter is a bit off, I kinda crashed my car (ironically my '98 Escort I based John's car off of the same day I decided that would be the car he'd drive), and so had to rush this chapter a bit haha. I'm glad to see you guys are enjoying things so far, and thank everyone awesome enough to leave a kudos, comment, bookmark, or even just take the time to read.


	8. Chapter 8

John woke up the next morning to the sound of a pitter-patter of paws on the gas station's tile floor. It took him a moment to realize what the sound was, somewhat sore and groggy. He'd initially thought it was Karkat walking, but realized that Karkat probably couldn't walk that fast, and probably didn't make panting noises. He carefully pulled himself up to peek over the counter, shoving his glasses on, and found himself looking at a fairly small dog sniffing around the decimated beef-jerky section Karkat had apparently violently eat his way through the previous night. John looked over to find Karkat still half curled up on the floor, apparently asleep. He quickly scanned the surroundings to make sure there wasn't anything else there, before grabbing his hammer and hopping over the counter. The dog instantly looked over at him, starring for a long moment before waddling over to him.

John didn't feel so great about this dog. Though he didn't have much experience with dogs he was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be so calm. It stopped a few feet in front of him, looking up at him with coppery orange eyes. John couldn't help but think it's forehead looked a bit weird, the same coppery orange shade spreading out from its otherwise dark brown fur in a perfect circle that looked to him like it was slightly glowing.

Before John could think of what to do about this animal that had found its way into the gas station, there was a sickle lodged in its head. It fell to the floor with a thud as John let out a surprised squeak, turning back to find Karkat hunched over the counter, pulling his second sickle off his belt. He looked like he was about to go into a full-on panic as he quickly picked up his bag and blanket and started limping towards the door.

"We're leaving NOW."

John was still in shock as he glanced at the dog bleeding on the floor, it's coppery forehead marking suddenly missing. He glanced between that and Karkat a few times before asking,"Karkat, what the hell?"

Karkat didn't even bother to look his way when he responded, glancing around paranoid as he returned from shoving his stuff in the car,"Psychics. Specifically a cavalreaper. I have no idea how close, or how many of them there could be, but they know we're here now, and we need to get the fuck out of here right fucking now."

John bolted to the back room, grabbing his phone. The generator had charged it about halfway before running out of fuel, and he quickly turned it off to preserve the power for as long as possible. Had the generators sound attracted attention? He didn't think so, they had barely been able to hear it in the main storefront with the office door closed. He decided it wasn't important and rushed to go collect everything he'd brought in for the night, hastily shoving it in the car, and jumping in the drivers seat.

Karkat pulled the sickle he'd thrown out of the dog's head, grabbed a few cases of water out of the stores freezer to sloppily stow away in the back seat, and jumped into the car with a painful hiss, yelling at John to hurry up and drive. John didn't argue, slamming his foot down on the gas.

Karkat was still twisted awkwardly into the passenger seat, and he kept up a steady hiss as he tried to move to somewhere that wasn't crushing some injury or another. He was watching out the windows looking for something, probably waiting for something to show up the way John was. It took ten minutes of driving at top speed for Karkat to stop the hissing, and a good thirty minutes more for him to seem satisfied they weren't going to be attacked at any second.

John eventually let out an awkward laugh,"I guess it's a good thing we took care of refueling the car, and pulling supplies out of the station last night, huh?"

Karkat just looked at him like he was insane, still wide eyed with nerves. He couldn't even find it in himself to be upset about ripping open some of the stitches in his leg in his haste to leave, he was just baffled by the fact they were still alive, and John was calm enough to make stupid comments and laugh. By all accounts they should be dead, speared by a cavalreaper or eaten by one of the beast they commanded. They were one of the more respected factions sent to this planet, and they were equipped with transportation that could have outrun them easily. That dog and whoever was controlling it had known both of them were there, had already been wandering around before they even woke up, why hadn't they been attacked yet?

Karkat could only come up with two options. Either they'd been deemed too unimportant to expend forces tracking down, an unlikely option as the empire tended to be incredibly thorough when dealing with apparent dissenters, or they were bring followed. There was a good chance they were being tracked in hopes they'd lead the military right to another group of humans.

He wasn't really sure what to do about that. He didn't have any psychic powers. He had no way of detecting if they were being followed. Even if he could confirm they were being followed, and was able to face their pursuers, what could he possibly do? John, as far as he could tell, was a shit fighter, and while Karkat's leg was starting to heal properly, and his arm was doing better he was in no shape to fight off multiple battle trained trolls and their lusi.

He glanced out the window, trying his hardest to scan the area through the UV blocking goggles. He couldn't see anything, no birds in the sky, or any other animals around, but that wasn't reassuring.

"I think we're being followed."

John looked over at Karkat a bit surprised, before asking,"What?"

"I said I think we're being followed you sopor sucking ignoramus. Clean out your auricle sponge clots."

John glanced around nervously, trying to survey the area without taking his eyes off the road for too long.

"Why would they follow us? Why not just attack us and get it over with?"

"They might think I'm part of some group of dissenters working with humans and we'll lead them back to more people."

"What are we going to do?"

"Fuck if I know. It's not like either of us are in any shape to fight, and we can't exactly be sure we're shaking off an enemy we can't even tell is there."

"We can't just lead them to Rose's house!"

Karkat paused a moment, looking at John with the flat, resigned annoyance he normally saved for the not-so-brilliant minds of low level threshecutioners he'd been forced to deal with, before replying with such heavy sarcasm John could detect it in his clicks and chirrs before the translator even started up,"Oh really, doctor brain professor, did you figure that one out all by yourself? Is the sky blue, John? Do bark-beast bark? I'm blown away by your incredible brilliance, how has your pan not grown to engulf us all in a spiel of completely obvious information?"

"Okay, okay. Geez, I was just saying. We've gotta come up with something though."

"Emperor obvious continues his cruel tyranny over the basically aware. When will the madness end, John? When will their cries for mercy reach your hardened heart?"

"Shut up."

Karkat glared at him, but John simply ignored him. He was honestly trying to think of something they could do. It didn't take long for him to come to the conclusion they'd have to fight anyone who might be following them. It was as he passed a farm with a pasture full of oddly healthy looking cattle that he was struck with an idea.

"Hey Karkat, if someone was following us, how long do you think we'd have to stay in one place before they'd decide to attack us?"

"Probably about a day or two. L-," Karkat had to stop himself from finishing the thought 'low level soldiers like the ones on this planet don't tend to be patient'. He still wasn't keen on spilling the armies workings to a human, such as the fact this planet was mostly being cleared with incredibly low ranking soldiers, even if he did basically trust John. He finished off simply stating,"A few trips away and back might better convince them it's a permanent settlement. Why?"

"I think I might know a way to make sure nobody's following us, and to get rid of anyone who is."

Karkat looked over at him interestedly, asking quickly,"And your glorious plan is?"

"We stay at one of these farms for a few days, and if anyone shows up to attack us, we bomb them."

Karkat nodded mockingly,"Okay, yeah, uh-huh, what was that last part about bombing again? Has your puzzle sponge rotted out through your auricle canals? We don't have a bomb."

John just grinned at him, a genuinely eager and cheery expression,"We can make one out of gasoline, some old clothes, and fertilizer."

Karkat stared a moment before making a little sound of approval, slightly impressed,"Well it seems humanity isn't as blindingly incompetent as I was initially lead to believe."

John started to explain, as they drove up to the next farmhouse John caught sight of, how he'd learned about how to make a fertilizer bomb when he'd been playing in the garage as a kid, and knocked a gasoline can onto his shirt. In his panic to not be caught playing where he wasn't supposed to, he made the poor decision to bury the evidence in his dad's short-lived gardening venture. Somehow, a day or two later, something had sparked it, and the resulting explosion sent half the yard careening into the next house over. Karkat redacted his statement about humanity holding any level of competence as John chuckled at the memory.

The farmhouse John had pulled up to was relatively small, older single story building with a peeling white and baby blue paint job, a big red barn off to the side, and a neglected flower garden in the front. There was a wooden sign near the steps up to the porch that stated in cheery font 'Home is where your sweetheart is.' surrounded by cartoony heart patterned lady bugs. Karkat was creeped out by the place, and lagged behind John as they got out of the car and made their way up to the front door, passing his slow movements off as a result of his limp. It was a good excuse, his leg did still hurt like hellfire any time he put pressure on it, and he had to move carefully, but he could move at a normal pace if he had to.

John turned back to Karkat when he reached the front door, watching with mild concern as Karkat awkwardly made his way up the couple steps to the porch.

"Hey Karkat, is there any chance that there could already be trolls here?"

Karkat shook his head no, explaining,"A place like this wouldn't be much interest. There's a chance a troop might have stopped by at some point, but I doubt anyone would still be here."

It was only then that something glaringly obvious came to John's mind.

"What if the humans who own this house are still here?"

John was fairly concerned by this possibility, partly because he would be overjoyed to find other people, and partly because he knew damn well that other people would be less than thrilled to see he was traveling with a troll. He could be finding survivors, and that prospect was exciting and a bit nerve wracking.

Karkat cared considerably less, pulling his sickle out of his belt as he finally got tired of waiting and gently pushed past John to open the door.

Karkat decided as soon as he opened the door that human presence was not going to be a problem. The place reeked of rotting flesh. The stench was potent enough to make John gag. Something had been dead and rotting in there for a long time, and when John cautiously made his way to the back room, hammer in hand, he found out just what was producing the smell.

On the master bedroom's bed were the remains of a couple, lying flat and apparently holding hands. The skulls were badly damaged, and blood and rotting flesh splattered the entire area around their heads like halos. The body on the left still held a gun, pointed at it's own mostly destroyed head. John had to leave the room to stop himself from puking. He simply let his back slide down the flowery hallway wall and curled up on the floor, trying to calm himself down. He sat there like that until Karkat, apparently satisfied searching the rest of the house, made his way down the hall and gently touched a hand to John's head, asking what was wrong. When John just shook his head in response, he didn't think he could open his mouth to speak without throwing up, Karkat made his way into the room.

A moment later Karkat made his way back out into the hall, now holding the gun, and handed John a piece of paper he explained he'd found on the nightstand. John uncurled himself enough to take the sheet of paper and scan through it.

It was a note, apparently left for a grandson, affectionately referred to as 'Teddy' throughout the letter. It explained simply that the occupants of this house, apparently an elderly couple, had come to the conclusion that their time had come, and that they'd rather go out together than wait for 'the demons sent down upon us from the cruel heavens above' to take them. John couldn't read through the last part, a short paragraph apologizing to their grandson should he find them, and telling him to stay strong. He just gently set the note down and cried.

Karkat decided it was best to let him. He didn't understand humans. He didn't understand why John would find himself so distraught at the thought of the deaths of two people he'd never even known existed, much less met before. It wasn't his place to do anything about it, though, and when John stated shakily that he couldn't stay in this house Karkat calmly started to unload some of their supplies into the barn next to the house.

When he reentered the house some time later to find John still sitting in the same spot he sat down next to him, paping at his back. He tried to tell himself it was because he needed this human sane and aware to help him survive, not because he pitied him right then. He had never been a very good liar.

 

oOo

 

Earlier that morning Rose Lalonde had woken up to a mass of text on her computer. She'd initially thought she was witnessing a programing error when she found the text to be blue instead of red, but quickly recognized the name of the sender, and just about started crying tears of joy.

She read through the messages as quickly as possible, flooding with relief when she realized John wasn't dead after all. It wasn't until she got a bit further down that her blood ran cold.

She reread the line over and over again, making sure she hadn't misread it, only to confirm that John had, in fact, stated he was traveling with a troll. She read through the rest carefully, paying incredible attention to every nuance and detail of the writing style and language used.

It looked like John's writing. It really really looked like John's writing, and the story seemed like the kind of stupid contrived nonsense John would find himself stuck in the middle of, but the part of her brain she'd let grow paranoid over the past couple months was telling her something was wrong. John wouldn't work with a troll, that was ridiculous, and why would this troll keep him alive? Even if he was severely injured working with a human seemed to her like something that would be out of the question.

And then it clicked for her.

As she started up a new memo, inviting Dave and Jade, images of reports of the mind controlled flashed through her head. Human puppets being lead by monsters that could crawl into their head, and lead them right to more victims in the guise of a friend.

TT: I think we have a very serious problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Got a bit of an early update today. Apologies for Rose's final text not being formatted, I've tried everything and can't get the coding to work.
> 
> Just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone. Your kudos, comments, and bookmarks are all wonderful.
> 
> EDIT : Got that Rose text working, thank you to those who sent me advice on that.


	9. Chapter 9

John calmed down later in the afternoon, finally standing up, and wiping the final remnants of tears from his face. Karkat got up with him, a light red tint to his face, and lead John out of the house. He walked a bit faster, face going a bit more red, when John thanked him for helping him calm down.

When they got to the barn John was impressed to find that Karkat had managed to make something of a small fortress in the corner furthest from the barns large doors out of wooden crates and bags of various farming and landscaping supplies. The interior of the fortress was small, but it would provide at least some protection should they have to launch a bomb nearby, and would provide a decent place to sleep with a floor padded with straw.

Karkat explained that he thought spreading a blanket over the straw might be a smart idea but he couldn't really do it without hurting himself. He also made a quick note that John would probably be safer sleeping in the upper level of the barn, and that he was fine staying on the level below until his leg healed enough to let him climb the rickety ladder up.

John crawled into the fort with the blanket he'd found sitting on top and started to spread it out.

"Nah, I'm fine sleeping down here. How are you feeling?"

Karkat plopped down on the ground next to the fort's entrance, surveying his wounds. His leg was still shot, though it was starting to at least look a bit better. The wound hadn't closed up, and he could tell the bones were still only barely forming the delicate latticework that would ultimately rejoin the broken ends together in the form of thicker, denser, scarred bone, but he'd been able to limp around on it without making it worse which was always a good sign. His arm still pulled wrong, and couldn't support much weight, but seemed to be healing, and he was breathing normally again. It was mildly concerning his smaller wounds weren't all closing, but he attributed that to his body taking priority with his larger injuries.

"Well, I'm no longer wading through the valley of dying of malnutrition. I can breathe normally again, and my arm isn't screaming in agony every five seconds anymore, but I'm still a sorry sack of shit otherwise. Still can't bend my arm much, and I ripped open the stitches on my leg earlier."

John crawled back outside of the fort, moving to sit with Karkat. He was pulling out medical supplies, the few he'd managed to scavenge together, and examining each item individually. He also pulled out a few bottles he'd found in the bathroom of the farmhouse, holding them out to John asking what they were.

Most of them turned out to be useless. Medications for ailments John either didn't know, or knew only served the elderly. The one godsend in the batch was a fairly large bottle of hydrogen peroxide. John went to retrieve some water, and helped Karkat dilute the solution before cautiously pouring it over the hole in his leg that had been ripped open earlier that morning. It bubbled violently upon contact, and washed out a deep red sludge that had built up around the split in skin, causing Karkat to hiss in pain.

"Ouch, does that sting?"

"What the fuck do you think, John."

John flicked at one of Karkat's nubby horns in jesting punishment for being a smart-ass, earning an incredulous glare that he decided to ignore completely.

"Do you want me to wash out some of your other injuries just to be on the safe side while you stitch your leg back up?"

Karkat glared at him for another moment before responding in an accusatory tone,"Just what is your game, Egbert?"

John looked at him blatantly confused,"What?"

Karkat leaned in to him, forcing John to lean back. Karkat was only more annoyed by the fact his glaring, and ability to practically tower over John didn't seem to frighten him at all.

"You know damn well what I'm talking about nooksucker. You've been red flirting with me like a shameless floozy for days now!"

John started laughing at the absurdity of it, as well as the fact Karkat was starting to turn a nice shade of red himself.

"Karkat, I'm not flirting with you."

"Yes you fucking are. You've been so touchy-feely, you have no fear of me, you talked me into that fucking feelings jam at your hive, and now you're trying to help clean my wounds and are touching my fucking horns. You're either after my bulge or after my pile, just fucking admit it."

"First off I don't really know what a bulge or pile is, so there's that. Second, I'm not flirting with you, I'm just being a nice person! You're kind of my friend now, and I just want to be helpful and friendly. I promise I'm not trying to get into your alien pants or anything."

Karkat glared a moment before deciding John was telling the truth. He didn't strike the troll as a very good liar.

"Fucking humans and your diseased 'friendship'."

When he saw John about to start laughing again Karkat half-heartedly hissed in his face,"Stop looking at me with that smug grin, Egbert, or I will slap it off you. DON'T YOU FUCKING LAUGH AT ME YOU WHORISH VOMIT SPEWING SHIT WEASEL."

John just laughed harder, quickly ducking into the fort before Karkat could actually grab him. When Karkat angrily and awkwardly tried to go after him he was met with a face full of straw. John could feel his ribs starting to ache when Karkat immediately started sneezing, sputtering to get the straw out of his face. He was too busy laughing to notice Karkat moving into a prepared crouch.

Karkat had pounced on top of him in the blink of an eye, practically laying on top of him as both his arm and leg had decided to give out at the same time and caused him to collapse. John hardly stopped laughing in his surprise, just kind of pawing at Karkat's face in an attempt to push him off. He was actually feeling something other than fear or misery for the first time in a while, and like hell was having a blushing, sniffly troll jump on him going to ruin that.

"Get off you jerk! You weigh a ton!"

Karkat growled down at him, doing his best to not continue sneezing. It was weird to him then, realizing just how small John was in comparison. He was short and average in composition, his bones were the same flimsy calcium based toothpicks other mammals possessed, he was nothing but squishy flesh otherwise, not so much as an armored plate on him, and the strongest natural weapon he apparently possessed were some laughably rounded excuses for canine teeth . He realized that he could probably snap even the thickest of John's bones without trying too hard, he could crush him with one hand, rip him to ribbons with a scratch, absolutely destroy him in seconds.

The thought didn't particularly appeal to anything other than a sense of vague pity Karkat was determined to snuff out before it could actually get anywhere. Stupid aliens. Stupid small, squishy, asshole aliens that flirted with you for days and then just laughed at you and claimed it was 'friendship'.

"Karkat, seriously, get off, you're kind of crushing me."

The troll glared down at him a moment, whispering as threateningly as he could with a now very stopped up nose that if he kept up his human nonsense he really would crush him, before pushing himself up and off of John.

John just watched Karkat awkwardly sit back up, pulling out his stitch kit and searching for something, before commenting jokingly,"If being nice to someone is flirting for trolls, does that mean you were flirting with me when you came in the house and started patting at my back?"

Karkat didn't bother to answer that, flipping him off with one hand, and using a small rag he'd found inside the house to blow his nose with the other. He was suddenly very harshly reminded that his nose was still technicaly not completely healed, as his attempt to clear his sinuses was met with a lot of blood and even more pain. The harsh whine he let out along with the sudden gush of red soaking through the cloth was enough to make John concerned, as he immediately demanded to see, and tried to help any way he could.

A minute or two later Karkat decided to just let his nose bleed as much as it wanted, wrapping the rag around his face below his nose to stop from getting blood everywhere. He didn't protest when John started cleaning out his smaller wounds as he busied himself stitching his leg back together.

After Karkat wrapped his leg in bandages and made sure the arm guards he was using for a splint were in their proper place he helped John finish up cleaning out scrapes and cuts, pulling the rag off and wiping up the last bits of blood with a delicate sniff. By the end of the whole ordeal he stung like he'd just taken a bath in acid, and felt like curling up in a ball and just staying there. Of course this plan was interrupted by a giggle fit coming from the suddenly very smiley human sitting at his side.

"What in the name of all that isn't violently awful in every conceivable way are you laughing at?"

"Dude we are so gross, look at how much dirt just disinfecting you cleaned off."

To prove his point he held up his own hand, showing how the palm was a good couple shades lighter than the rest of his skin, a clear line between clean skin and filth, and Karkat was somewhat dismayed to find he was now a mess of spots of clear skin swimming in a sea of nasty. He'd never liked being dirty. He considered himself to be pretty hygienic, and he suddenly found himself very much aware of how greasy his hair was, and how generally disgusting he'd gotten.

John was a lot worse off in the cleanliness department. He hadn't had the opportunity to shower much since the invasion began, as water had been too precious a resource to waste. His hair, not as coarse and dry as troll hair, had built up enough grease that it basically maintained any position he put it in, and his skin was a nice shade of almost gray. He also didn't have the benefit of being mostly covered, wearing only shorts and a shirt, and thus exposed to a lot more general mess. He was pretty glad he couldn't actually smell himself, and he realized that Karkat's broken, unsmelling nose might actually be a blessing.

John suddenly had the thought that a place like this out in the middle of nowhere probably had its own water supply. He could very well get a proper shower in the house if his guess was correct.

He figured he could wait on that one a bit.

"Hey, the shower in the house might work. You could go get clean while I try to make a bomb."

Karkat nodded, thinking that sounded like a pretty nice idea. He figured he could trust John to not blow himself up long enough to go clean himself off a bit.

"I'm guessing you won't be taking a shower?"

John shrugged, pushing himself up to go search the barn for fertilizer,"I will. Just not right now."

Karkat decided to let John be, offering a final,"Don't accidentally kill yourself asshole," before heading off to the house.

John spent the next thirty minutes or so gathering supplies, and trying to remember how to actually build the bomb without setting it off. He'd looked it up after his little accident in the garden, as his dad had decided to take the incident as a learning opportunity in both chemistry and not accidentally creating highly dangerous explosives, and he knew there was something of a method to it.

He did his best not to think about his dad much, it just made him sad. He didn't really think he had the tears left in him to let himself get worked up about it.

After roughly another thirty minutes of fiddling with fertilizer and gasoline trying to get levels correct, and shoving the whole concoction, held in a cotton shirt medium, into a metal can John knew he could control a bit more safely, he held in his hands a, hopefully functioning, bomb. He took a moment to glance down at his watch, a bit startled to find that so much time had passed. It couldn't possibly take Karkat that long could it?

The paranoid part of John's mind reawakened with full force. What if Karkat had gotten attacked? What if he'd slipped on his bad leg and gotten really hurt? John decided he'd have to brave the house again and go check. He left the bomb behind, figuring that it probably wouldn't be too much help in an enclosed space, and instead decided to grab the large hammer sitting near a shelf full of tools in the barn.

He got into the house and was met with dead silence. The shower obviously wasn't on, and it didn't sound like anyone was walking around. John took a look around, making sure nobody was there, before sprinting back to the bathroom. He didn't bother to knock, bursting through the door instead.

He was met not with a murdered or otherwise injured Karkat, but with a very naked, and very angry one. The troll was leaning awkwardly against the sink, trying to hop into a pants leg.

Karkat had taken a while for just about every reason other than those John had predicted. He'd found the water worked perfectly well, and then been met with the task of getting his clothes off, something that turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. After hopping into the shower he'd spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out how the controls in the shower worked, nearly burning himself several times. After sitting under the water for a while rubbing himself clean as best he could, he'd been met with the monumental task of getting out of the tub without slipping and hurting himself.

And now here he was just trying awkwardly to get his pants back on, and there was John busting the door in and starring right at him.

Admittedly there wasn't a whole lot to see. John's quick, impulsive glance down at Karkat's crotch revealed only a bony plate the same reddish orange color as his horns. John pulled his eyes away as soon as his brain registered just what it was looking at, but it wasn't fast enough. Karkat flung a hand down to cover his crotch, and screamed something at him so loudly the translator couldn't actually make it out.

John ran for it, dashing back out to the barn dragging his hammer behind him. He crawled into the fort, trying to process what had just happened.

So he'd walked in on Karkat naked. And maybe starred at his crotch a few seconds longer than he should have as his brain attempted to process what was going on. It wasn't like he'd done it consciously, Karkat's crotch-bone-thing did happen to be the only part of him that wasn't a nice shade of almost black, and the eye did tend to drift towards anything that stood out.

He conceded that he probably shouldn't have just barged in, he'd be pretty mad if someone did that to him. He'd have to apologize when Karkat got dressed and showed back up.

After deciding that pleading for mercy would probably be an okay way to handle that situation, he found himself sitting in the fort without a whole lot to do other than think about what he'd actually just seen. Alien anatomy was still interesting, and though he knew from Karkat's face and chest he had some plating on him he hadn't really been expecting it to be as extensive as it was. He kind of wondered if the plates felt like a bugs, and if they ever got in the way of Karkat trying to move.

And as much as he didn't really want to think about it because it was kind of creepy, and an invasion of Karkat's privacy he kind of wondered what in the world was up with Karkat just having a plate of bone over his crotch. Trolls did have to reproduce, right?

When Karkat finally came chasing after him some five minutes later wearing only his pants John immediately started to apologize, holding his hands up between them defensively.

"Please don't kill me, I didn't mean to walk in on you! I thought you were taking a long time, and thought you were hurt or something, I wasn't trying to creep on you I swear!"

Karkat was torn.

On the one hand he kind of needed this human to survive.

On the other John was wadding deeper into the pits of rage that burned within his anger fueled soul, and he was quite frankly getting sick of his bullshit.

He settled for smacking John over the back of the head as hard as he thought he could without causing permanent damage, not all that hard honestly, before explaining in extensive detail what an utter moron John was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think the real miracle here isn't that John managed to not blow up, or that there's working water, but the simple fact that Sollux managed to make a translator that could understand chemical names.


	10. Chapter 10

By the time the sun had set John had managed to go take a quick shower without too much of an issue. The main issue he'd had to face was the stench of rot, one he stupidly decided to try to fix by spraying perfume he found in the bathroom. All he really succeeded in doing was making everything smell like dead people and roses.

He took his shower as fast as possible and tried his best to focus on the massive amounts of filth washing down the drain instead of ever present reminder of the couple rotting two rooms over.

After his shower, he and Karkat had also had a chance to completely search the barn. Their only real discoveries had been some tools that looked like they could make okay weapons, including the kind of obnoxiously large sledge hammer John had decided to take for himself, and a massive hoard of peanuts.

John was less than thrilled with the peanut discovery. He was violently allergic to the things, he'd been sent to the hospital on more than one occasion because of them, and could only frown pointedly at the little capsules of poison wishing they were something he could actually ingest. His annoyance only grew when Karkat tried one and immediately decided he loved them. Karkat ended up just sitting by the massive bag munching on them. His only response to John's request he eat them somewhere other than their fort was a middle finger and a "Fuck you they're delicious and not making me sick."

In annoyance, John had gone to beat up some useless crap in the barn with his hammer, passing it off as combat practice, and taken to "accidentally" knocking things in the direction of Katkat's head. After a few minutes of completely failing to hit him, Karkat seemed to actually become vaguely interested in what he was doing.

"Try swinging primarily with your other hand."

John looked over at him, a bit surprised, before shrugging and switching the hammer to be held primarily by his other hand. His next shot was still off, but the can he'd hit landed much closer to Karkat, and he could feel the entire movement flow a bit more smoothly. Karkat nodded, continuing on by telling him to slip his left hand a bit further up on the handle. The next good hour or so was spent with John swinging his hammer at things while Karkat offered advice on improving his form and technique. Despite being a sickle user, he knew a good deal about blunt force weaponry, and seized the opportunity to teach John a bit about not being a defenseless weakling.

By the end of his practice session John was starting to wish he'd waited to take his shower until after doing this. He was sweating through his shirt, and could feel the strain in his chest and arms. The thought of standing under some warm water for a while sounded pretty nice, but he didn't exactly want to go back in the house any more than he had to. He decided that maybe he could go shower tomorrow.

He and Karkat ended up relocating to the fort, John laying down where he'd laid out his sleeping bag, and Karkat curling up in the corner. He offered John a single stick of the beef jerky he'd apparently hoarded back at the gas station, something John was surprised to see survived the apparent massacre the previous night, and told him his initiative to learn how to fight was an unexpectedly smart move, especially with Karkat himself not being in much of a shape to fight off much of anything.

John thanked him, slowly chewing on the jerky, and pulled his phone out. He'd looked and found that this farm didn't have a generator, or any other source of electricity, and knew he didn't have a ton of energy left, but he decided that his priority would be to try to get in contact with Rose, and that required actually turning his phone on to check his pesterchum every now and again.

When he started his phone up he was met with messages from both Rose and Jade, though only Rose was online. Jade's message was short and to the point, warning him that Rose and Dave were both highly concerned with the news he was with a troll, though she trusted him and thought he was probably just fine, and that he should be careful talking to either of them. She asked him if he could give her any information on trolls he'd discovered traveling with one, and asked if he could get on around two the next day and let her talk to his new traveling companion. She also added a quick note at the end that Dave and Rose were just scared, that fear tended to make people kind of irrational, and that he should be patient with his friends. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to John until he clicked on Rose's screen name.

Rose's existing message was both less concise and less friendly.

TT: John, after talking it over with Dave, Jade, and my mother, as well as spending a considerable amount of time thinking on things myself, I have come to the conclusion I do not have quite enough information to make any strict decisions just yet. TT: I hope you can understand my concerns regarding the news you have taken a troll as a traveling companion, and the even deeper worries that you are leading this beast to my home. To put it bluntly I do not trust this troll, and at the moment I cannot trust you.  
TT: Though Jade made it a point to explain how illogical a move it would be for a troll using mind control to tell me beforehand that they were traveling with you instead of simply pretending that you were traveling alone and ambushing me, I still have my concerns. Just because an idea is bad, doesn't mean it isn't in practice. Even if we could prove you weren't being psychically influenced there is still a good chance you are simply being manipulated.   
TT: I would like an opportunity to speak with you and the troll you are traveling with to gain a bit more insight on the situation before making any final decision.  
TT: I should also probably inform you that until you earn the trust of both myself and my mother any attempts to approach our home will result in you being attacked. I apologize for this, really I do, John, but you must understand there are many more lives at play than mine and your own.

By the time John read through the text wall there was a new message waiting for him.

TT: Hello John.  
TT: If it is in fact John I am speaking to.  
EB: hi rose!  
EB: and of course it's me. trolls don't know how to read or speak english.  
TT: Using you as something of a translator could allow them to.  
EB: uh, yeah, i guess they could.  
EB: it would take kind of a while to do, though. even just talking to karkat takes some time because his translator is really slow.  
TT: Is the troll there with you now?  
EB: we're both sitting in this fort thing he made in a barn, but he's not paying any attention to what i'm doing.  
TT: What is he doing?  
EB: eating a bunch of peanuts we found here.  
TT: And why aren't you having any?  
EB: rose you know im allergic to nuts  
EB: if i ate them i would die.  
TT: Well you pass test one. I doubt a troll would take the time to consider allergies of yours or go digging in your head to find them.  
TT: Then again there is a good chance your allergy simply came to mind upon noticing the nuts, or, again, you may simply be being manipulated.  
EB: do you really think i'd get tricked by some alien?  
TT: Yes.  
TT: Yes I do.   
TT: You aren't exactly the face of cunning and healthy skepticism, John.   
EB: come on rose, what's it going to take to convince you i'm not your enemy, and that karkat is safe?   
TT: Let me speak to the troll. I'm willing to make a compromise if it is.

John turned to Karkat, who was still passively sitting in the corner munching on peanuts. John was appreciative he was at least keeping the outer casings he was peeling away in a nice neat pile so John didn't have to worry about accidentally getting one in his mouth in his sleep. He figured he could probably act as a middle man and type for him.

"Hey Karkat."

"What?"

"Rose wants to talk to you."

Karkat actually looked up at him, a bit confused,"I can't exactly type out my responses. Or read hers for that matter."

Rose was sending him impatient question marks, and he quickly typed out to her to give him a minute.

"I'll translate for you, just talk to her so she lets us come to her house."

Karkat rolled his eyes, answering in a calm,"Fine. What does she want anyways?"

EB: okay, he'll talk to you, i'm gonna have to translate though so responses might take a while. i'll type whatever he says in all caps so you can tells us apart okay?  
TT: It works for me.  
TT: Ask him his intentions regarding traveling with you, and why he thinks I should believe he won't turn on us.

The response took a moment, finally coming in all caps.

EB: MY INTENTIONS ARE REACHING SAFETY WHILE NOT GETTING CULLED BY MY OWN FUCKING KIND. I DON'T KNOW IF JOHN TOLD YOU BUT I'M NOT EXACTLY A PICTURE OF HEALTH, AND I NEED AN ACTUAL COMPUTER TO CONTACT SOMEONE TO PICK ME UP, SOMETHING I DO NOT HAVE AND THAT YOU SEEM TO. IF I WANTED YOU FUCKS DEAD OR WAS PART OF THE MILITARY I WOULD JUST TRACE THE SIGNAL SENDING YOUR MESSAGES TO JOHN'S PHONE WITH THE COMPUTER THAT, OH, SURPRISE, SURPRISE, I DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE BUT WOULD IF I WASN'T JUST AS MUCH A REFUGEE AS YOU.  
EB: AS FOR REASSURANCE I WON'T MURDER YOU ONCE I REACH THERE ANYWAYS, I'M NOT A SAVAGE. I'M CAPABLE OF RECOGNIZING WHEN SOMEONE IS HELPING ME, AND I'M NOT ENOUGH OF A HONORLESS SHIT-STAIN TO TRY TO MURDER YOU BASTARDS.  
TT: Does your society highly value honor?  
EB: THE HIGHER UPS DON'T, THOUGH THEY CLAIM THEY DO. I LIKE TO THINK I'VE GOT BASIC INTEGRITY THOUGH.  
TT: That doesn't exactly instill a lot of faith, though I will take your response into consideration.  
TT: You mentioned that you plan on contacting friends of yours to retrieve you once you gain access to a computer. How do you plan on doing that exactly?  
EB: MY TRANSLATOR HAS A MEMORY DISK WITH A COPY OF TROLLIAN IN IT. BASICALLY A CHAT SYSTEM SIMILAR TO THE ONE JOHN AND YOU APPEAR TO BE USING ONLY VASTLY SUPERIOR IN EVER WAY. I'D BE ABLE TO MESSAGE A FRIEND OF MINE, DESIGNATE A PICK UP POINT, AND GET THE FUCK OF THIS MISERABLE PLANET.  
TT: You have friends that do not care you are a mutant?  
EB: OF COURSE I DO. HOW ELSE WOULD I HAVE GOTTEN THIS FAR WITHOUT GETTING CAUGHT? MY IDIOT HACKER FRIEND THAT BUILT THE TRANSLATOR HAD TO HACK INTO THE SYSTEM AND CONVINCE THE GOVERNMENT I WASN'T A FREAK OF NATURE.  
TT: Would this be the friend that would be retrieving you?  
EB: NO. HE'S OFF IN THE OTHER END OF HELL SPACE. I HAVE A FEW FRIENDS STATIONED SOMEWHERE ON THE EAST SIDE OF THIS CONTINENT THAT I WOULD RELY ON, OR, IF CONTACTING THEM WAS TOO DANGEROUS, I HAVE ANOTHER FRIEND I'M PRETTY SURE IS PIRATING SOMEWHERE NEAR HERE.  
TT: And even if I do decide to trust you, why should I trust them?  
EB: I DON'T REALLY EXPECT YOU TO TAKE MY WORD ON THIS BUT THEY LISTEN TO ME PRETTY WELL. IF I TELL THEM NOT TO MURDER YOU THEY WON'T MURDER YOU. IF NOTHING ELSE I CAN ASSIGN A MEETING POINT WITH THEM AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE.  
TT: Why would they listen to a mutant though?  
EB: I'M AN AMAZING LEADER, AND I'VE HELPED ALL THEIR ASSES BEFORE, THEY FUCKING OWE ME.  
TT: Well, that's less than reliable, but I'll take your word for it for the time being. I suppose I should stop interrogating you and get right to the point before John's phone battery dies. I'm willing to make a deal. If you offer me information on your species that I may be able to confirm is true, that would directly benefit humanity, and you agree to not come directly to my house, but meet me at, oh, say, the Rainbow Mart grocery store nearby, I am willing to trust you and allow you to stay in my residence and use my computer.

John watched Karkat mull that over as his translator fed John's words back to him. Karkat seemed to be taking this a lot more seriously than he had previous information request from Rose, and finally responded.

"I'm not sure I feel comfortable telling you that. It would be a massive betrayal against my empire, as well as a massive safety risk to my friends who are currently working for it. Even if I just gave you a way to hinder our progress it would mean the deaths of a lot of trolls, and I do not plan on betraying my people like that."

John had absolutely no intention of typing that into pesterchum for Rose to mull over. Instead he decided to attempt to reason with him instead.

"Karkat, if you say that Rose is just going to be completely convinced that you're evil."

"I'm not a traitor. That's my final answer."

John could tell by the determined look in his eyes Karkat wasn't going to budge on that. He'd seen enough war movies to recognize the face of a man ready and willing to die before betraying his country.

TT: Hello?  
EB: karkat is kind of not willing to say anything.  
EB: he says it would be a betrayal of his friends and country, and that he's not a traitor.  
TT: I see.  
EB: rose, please don't think that means he's evil, i think he just doesn't want to see his friends get hurt because of something he told you. you wouldn't tell a troll where me, and dave, and jade were even if it meant you dying, would you?  
TT: ...No. I suppose I wouldn't.  
TT: And from what we've been able to gather trolls seem to be a highly nationalistic race. It makes sense that he's reluctant to let any information slip.  
TT: That does not, however, mean I am willing to compromise on this. I need something to work with here.  
TT: If he is unwilling to directly help us defeat other trolls, ask him if there would be any way to encourage them to leave the planet without causing them direct harm. It's a long shot, but he might know something.

John turned to Karkat, who'd taken to looking very seriously at the ground, and relayed Rose's question to him.

TT: Well?  
EB: MAYBE.  
EB: THE CHANCE ANY PLAN LIKE THIS WOULD ACTUALLY WORK WOULD BE SLIM TO NONE, OUR SPECIES ISN'T EXACTLY KNOW FOR LEAVIG LOOSE ENDS, BUT THIS PLANET ISN'T A PRIORITY COLONY, AND IF IT BECAME ENOUGH OF AN ANNOYANCE WITHOUT EVER POSING ITSELF AS A THREAT THE CONDESCE MIGHT JUST GIVE UP ON IT.  
EB: AGAIN, I SERIOUSLY DOUBT IT WOULD WORK, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU WOULD ACTUALLY DO THAT, AND THERE'S A GOOD CHANCE YOU'LL JUST PISS THE EMPIRE OFF, BUT I GUESS IT'S WORTH A SHOT IF YOU WANT TO TRY.  
TT: Do you know of anything that might 'annoy' your empress as you so stated without causing further incitation?  
EB: I LITERALLY JUST SAID I DIDN'T. I COULD TRY TO THINK SOMETHING UP, THOUGH. IF WE EVER REACHED A DESPERATE POINT IN THIS, AND I COULD FIND A WAY TO DO IT, I COULD ALWAYS TRY TO ASK ERIDAN ABOUT IT.  
TT: Eridan?  
EB: A FRIEND OF MINE.  
TT: I take it you'd need my computer for that.  
EB: NO. I'D NEED AN ALTERNIAN COMPUTER. HE'S NOT ANYWHERE NEAR HERE RIGHT NOW, AND I DOUBT YOUR MACHINE IS CAPABLE OF SENDING AND RECEIVING SIGNALS FROM THAT DISTANCE.  
TT: Very well. I suppose we could figure it out if things came to that point. For now I will say that I still do not exactly trust you, but I do want John back safe and alive. If you come up with anything let me know. Contact me when you think you may be able to reach the grocery store near my home. If you show up at my house, either of you, I will assume you are a threat, and you will be attacked.  
TT: I will allow you to take your leave and hopefully preserve some battery life on John's phone. Goodbye.

And with that Rose signed out of pesterchum. John turned his phone off after reading out Rose's message to Karkat, then promptly threw the phone at his head. He understood that Karkat was just being loyal, that he was trying to protect his friends the same way Rose was protecting hers, but he couldn't help but be a bit annoyed with him for refusing to cooperate. Karkat held up a peanut threateningly, and handed the phone back as John let out a snort at the absurdity of being threatened by a giant scary looking alien with a tiny peanut being held in his giant clawed hands.

Neither of them noticed the large barn rat sitting just outside the entrance to the fort, a bright copper ring with what looked like coppery horns protruding from the top lightly glowing on its forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning on posting an extra chapter this week both in celebration of 4/13 as well as something of an apology for this chapter being a bit shorter (and heavy in less than trilling dialogue), but real life started happening pretty fiercely haha. Next weeks update may or may not be a two-parter.
> 
> Either way, happy Homestuck day, and a big thank you for comments, kudos, and all the rest!


	11. Chapter 11

Tavros Nitram was confused, to say the least, when Aradia contacted him in the middle of a feeding round and demanded he check on Karkat as soon as he could. He'd sent her back a quick message along the lines of 'uH... wHAT?' before returning to taking care of the lusi.

Tavros liked his job. He wasn't of a high enough rank just yet to be fighting on the front lines, and so had gotten the position of custodian baby-sitter, and that was all fine by him. He was in charge of feeding, grooming, and generally caring for all the lusi that either weren't fit for the battle field, or were resting for a while, while their charges were busy with other things. It was considered a grunt job, given only to the lowest of the low, but he found solace in it. It meant he got to spend a lot of time with the animals he so loved, he always had something to do, and most importantly to him he was often working by himself, where there wasn't anyone to make snide comments about his mechanical legs, or the wings that had grown during his final pupation.

Not that the comments got to him much either. He'd grown a bit of a spine since his younger days, and he considered both the things he was most commonly mocked for positives in their own right. His legs made him faster than most other trolls, as well as a lot more durable when it came to things like falling and such, and he thought his wings were pretty awesome. He'd been happily surprised to find it was one of the incredibly rare mutations the condense actually held no issue with and had deemed beneficial. Sure he couldn't fly too well, his robotic legs were just a bit too heavy, but it was still neat, all things considered. In fact he'd taken to flying around the area in which he was stationed during the nights, gliding cheerfully over the broken buildings and the open sea.

He'd been feeding Karkat's lusus a handful of roe cubes when he remembered Aradia's message and decided that it probably wouldn't hurt to take a moments break to check on him. He reread where she'd stated the ghosts had told her to tell him to look, and did his best to shove his mind in the right direction, feeling around for a bit before finding the exact place. He eventually latched onto a bark beast in the area, and used its sense of smell to track down his friend.

He realized pretty quickly why Aradia had asked him to check on Karkat. He was far from any place Karkat should have been stationed, near some refueling building that looked to be in the middle of nowhere, and the smell of dried blood and injury was apparent in the air, even overpowering the stench of rotted food and gasoline. He prompted the dog to patter forward, jumping gently into the building through the broken gas station door.

Tavros could smell now that Karkat was healing. He'd been injured for a while, and probably wasn't in any immediate danger, but he still needed to check. He moved the dog around the counter, following the trail.

He was surprised to find Karkat not at all alone. He'd been so focused on Karkat's scent he hadn't picked up at all on the stench of the human he was apparently with, sleeping right next to the troll. Tavros wasn't sure what to make of it. He knew that no matter how injured, Karkat wasn't the type to let himself fall asleep next to an enemy, and he doubted a human would just cuddle up to a troll if there wasn't some level of assurance they were safe.

He let the dog wander around a bit, still gently holding on to its consciousness, as he tried to mull this finding over and figure out what in the world was going on. It occurred to him that Karkat might be a prisoner. But that didn't make sense. He'd seen Karkat and could tell he wasn't that badly injured, he would fight to the death before letting some weak alien take him hostage, and he wasn't restrained in any way. Maybe the human was the prisoner? But that didn't make much sense either. He, again, wasn't restrained at all, and Karkat wasn't dumb enough to just trust a prisoner.

He was still letting his mind drift in pondering thought when the dog's hearing picked something up that brought Tavros's attention back to the gas station in full. The scruffy beast had been sniffing at the remains of some packages that had at one point contained some kind of meat, and he had to turn to see just what had made the sound

The human had apparently woken up, standing and starring down at him with a curious and confused expression on his face. Tavros decided to try to get a better look at the kid, padding over before stopping to examine him. It was shorter than a troll, but that was expected. He'd heard from the soldiers whose lusi he watched over that humans were small. The rest of the features were plain. Black hair, glass visual assistors, covered in sweat and filth, pretty scrawny looking. All in all Tavros was less than impressed.

And then he lost contact completely. A quick jolt of pain through the forehead, and then a loss of any consciousness at all. Tavros figured out fairly quickly upon trying to make contact again that the dog he'd been using as a conduit had been killed, but he couldn't really figure out exactly how.

He didn't get much of a chance to think about it further until his rounds were done. Karkat's lusus had started poking at the large centipede hoofbeast in the stall next to it and he had to put his energy into breaking up the ensuing fight, making extra sure the crab lusus wasn't injured to the point of blood spill, and then spending a good long while finishing his rounds before hurrying back to the small room he'd been given as living quarters whilst stationed on planet.

He immediately tried to get in contact with Aradia first. He wasn't surprised to find her busy, she always seemed to be as of late, being such a valuable soldier and intelligence gatherer, but he was surprised to find she'd left him another message telling him to check a new location. He did as she asked, latching onto the squeak creature at the location she'd specified, and followed the sounds of talking.

He found Karkat again, as well as the human he'd been with. The two seemed to be talking to each other, the human translating some kind of conversation happening on his small electronic device. The first clear words he could make out were from Karkat,"-my idiot hacker friend that built the-"

He patiently went about his normal routine, keeping hold of the rats mind and listening to the conversation being had. It took him a minute to figure out just what was going on, and he had no idea what to make of things when he finally did put the pieces together.

Karkat, apparently due to his injury, was working with a human. He was using the human to get someplace safe, apparently with more humans, where he could either heal properly so as not to be caught with his mutation when he went to go find another Alternian squad, or get picked up by either him, Aradia, or apparently even Vriska, who was the only other member of their circle of friends close enough to help much. He was also being good about seeming trustworthy without giving the humans any actual information.

Tavros was somewhat impressed he'd done so well, but worried too. He didn't know how Karkat had gotten into such a position in the first place, why he was injured and how he'd ended up working with the enemy even temporarily, and he wasn't really sure there was all that much he could do to help.

He settled for sending Aradia all the information he'd gathered, and waiting for a response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick bonus chapter of sorts I got finished with pretty early. A proper length chapter will be coming out on Sunday as usual, and I guarantee it'll be more exciting haha.
> 
> As something of a note, I figured that Tavros would inherit the genetics for wing development, being the summoners ancestor, and that it would be considered a positive mutation. After all, the summoner was apparently very very highly ranked in the army when he was alive, and it's heavily suggested the condesce liked him as a soldier. It's honestly not going to come into play much in this fic haha.
> 
> Another bonus for anyone interested, I drew out an anatomy ref for Karkat. It's got a few spoilers concerning troll anatomy we haven't yet gotten a chance to see, but if you don't mind that you can check it out haha. It explains in a bit more detail some stuff I don't think I explained very clearly, and I guess it's kind of a show of how alien I actually imagine the trolls in this fic. (though u can imagine them however u want, if the hard xenos aren't your thing) Fair warning there's bulges and he's naked as naked can be.
> 
> http://31.media.tumblr.com/2b47b02b6b5bc374c7e116837895ba2f/tumblr_n459kngAy31r1kgzgo1_r1_1280.png


	12. Chapter 12

The next several days for Karkat and John were spent mostly waiting around boredly for something to happen. About half the day one of the two was asleep, the other forced to stay up to keep watch, and they both considered it to be the most boring part of their little schedule. There were several occasions John had woken up to Karkat counting and assorting pieces of straw by such factors as size, texture, and color in an attempt to stave off boredom, and Karkat had woken up to John arranging the random bits of garbage around the barn into more and more complex mini forts in an effort to find something to do on more than one occasion.

They both grew to prefer the time when they were both awake. They had worked out a way to practice strifing so that Karkat wasn't at risk of further hurting his leg or arm, and John was getting better and better with his hammer. They both enjoyed the mock fights quite a bit. Even injured and unable to fight quite normally Karkat had worked his ass off to be good with his sickles and it showed through in even his smallest movements and mannerisms. John started to like simply watching Karkat fight as much as he liked the combat itself, and he could tell Karkat got a kick out of getting to go at something with his sickles again, even if he did have to heavily restrain himself.

When practice fighting wasn't an option they'd taken to simply talking to each other and exploring the area around the farm. Mostly they shared stories about their childhood, and discussed weird cultural differences. Some differences came as absolutely no surprise. John had already known that their family structures differed wildly, and though Karkat found it interesting he was already aware that human culture didn't revolve around violence to quite the degree his culture did.

There were other differences that caught them slightly off guard. John had been blown away at the absurdity of the length of the title of Karkat's favorite movies and the length of history Trolls had had movies, and Karkat had been as utterly baffled by the human diet as John had been about a trolls. John found it interesting how just about everything trolls used was alive in some way, and Karkat didn't understand how humans functioned on such a dead world.

They did find they held a lot of similarities as well, though. They'd both grown up mostly talking to friends online, and had spent a lot of time with just their parents growing up in rather uninhabited places. They both talked a lot about their friends, and John felt bad when he realized he hadn't at all expected Karkat to care about his as much as it quickly became obvious he did, even if he claimed otherwise.

They both liked movies and books, though different genres, and it quickly became a massive bonding point for the two and a source of endless conversation. John had found it hilarious when Karkat explained his favorite kind of movies and he figured out they basically boiled down to romantic comedies, and that his favorite novels were the kind of trashy paperbacks that typically only appealed to very lonely middle aged housewives. Karkat had huffily informed him he just didn't understand the beauty in the relationships described within, and that John liked his action movies so much because he was too stupid to appreciate the many nuances of romance properly. John had just laughed harder, and then proceeded to joke about the irony of the alien from the vastly more violent species being the one obsessed with fluffy rom-coms while he enjoyed some good old destruction and well planned dramatic mayhem.

Over the span of the week they ended up spending at the farmhouse the two hadn't been able to get a hold of Dave at all, but did manage to get a quick chance to speak with Jade, finally managing to get a hold of her elusive online schedule. As soon as she confirmed John was okay and doing well, she wanted to speak to Karkat. Her ultimate conclusion had been that Karkat was an asshole, but was funny and seemed trustworthy enough for the time being so it wasn't a big deal. She'd been mentioning she'd found some new information when John's phone battery finally gave up the ghost, and shut off with a final beeping death cry.

It was the day after that development that Karkat and John both agreed that they would have been attacked by now if they were truly being followed, and that it would be in their best interest to start heading towards Rose's residence again. They'd been staying at the farmhouse for roughly a week, and were starting to run a bit low on food, and general supplies. Karkat announced that they'd need to find another building to loot along the way, and John agreed that the sooner they could do just that, the better.

After Karkat offered a somewhat tearful parting with the working indoor plumbing of the house, and after John delicately laid a blanket over the unfortunate couple in the master bedroom as something of a respectful gesture of laying them to rest, the two packed everything up in John's car and drove away from the farmhouse for good.

It didn't take more than about ten minutes into the drive for Karkat to start starring out the window nervously.

"I think we might want to find a place to stop for the night earlier than we were planning."

John looked over at him questioningly, responding with a soft,"How come?"

"There's bad weather heading this way. I'm not familiar with your planet's climate, but I can tell a storm when I sense one."

John scanned the sky, trying to figure out how Karkat knew a storm bad enough to make them stop was on the way. Sure it was a little overcast, but he was pretty sure it was sometime near spring, light rain was common, and it didn't look like they'd be getting anything worse than some light sprinkling. John told him as much, reassuring the troll that he knew the weather here better because he'd been born on this planet, and informed him that they would be completely fine.

It was only after they had long since driven past the only gas station the map told them they'd encounter for a good while that John started to realize that maybe Karkat hadn't been wrong in being concerned about the weather. The sky, despite his watch reading 3:14 in the afternoon, was a sickly dark greenish-gray, and he could hear the rumble of a wrathful storm amongst the rain that had begun to shower them in heavy sheets no more than thirty minutes prior. He knew for a fact he'd made the wrong decision in ignoring Karkat's warning when the wind picked up strongly enough to make driving in a straight line a monumental task, and the rain was pouring down so heavily that no effort of his windshield wipers made much difference.

Karkat didn't even say anything as John made the announcement he'd made the executive decision to pull over and see if they could wait the storm out, as driving at this point was too dangerous. He'd been quietly growing more and more uncomfortable as the drive had gone on, squirming in his seat, and generally looking ill. He now simply starred at John with a look that pretty universally conveyed that he believed John to be an idiot, and that he had completely told him so.

The look faded into one of panic when John tried to pull onto the side of the road and proceeded to accidentally drive right into a ditch he hadn't noticed through the thick coats of rain obscuring the view beyond his windshield. In shock John slammed his foot on the gas, mistaking it for the break, and managed to launch his vehicle out of the ditch like a sluggish rocket, landing just beyond the gap between the field they were now stationed in and the road with a muddy plop.

Karkat was visibly shaking, as was John as they sat in the car for a moment after the vehicle settled. John eventually turned the key in the ignition to turn off the car, and gingerly picked up the fertilizer bomb that he'd been holding in his lap up until the point the accident had launched it into the floorboards. He considered it something of a miracle the thing hadn't gone off.

Before John could say anything Karkat decided he really needed to not be in the car right now, and threw open his door, clamoring out on unsteady legs and very nearly slipping face first into the ground when he was hit by the wind. He normally wasn't half as easy to shake up, but the storm was messing with his senses, and his lack of bearings on things combined with John's car stunt had just about scared the shit out of him. After puking up stomach acid a few feet away from the car, he nearly slid off the edge of the ditch and into the muddy water gathering below. He settled for carefully walking over to the road, as the ground was slick and sucked at his feet when he tried to move in the grass, and found John soon running after him, still cradling the bomb in one arm.

"Hey Karakt! Are you okay?"

He had to yell to be heard over the sound of the wind and rain, and was mildly concerned that he was now soaking through his clothes. He could hear thunder, and see lightning flashing in the dark clouds above, and he knew that he really needed to get Karkat back in the car.

Karkat was having absolutely none of it for the time being, coming down from him panic as slowly and as angrily as possible.

"No, John, I'm not fucking alright. I told you driving in this weather was a bad idea, and then you try to heinously murder us both in a motorized vehicle accident by driving us into a god forsaken ditch at top speed. Half my senses are so muddled it's hard to tell what's going on around me, and the very last thing I needed was a little happy fun-time adventure through flying straight into the pits of Earth hell land. My mouth tastes like bile, my wind pipe stings to hell, and we almost just died. What the ever-loving shit is wrong with the magnetic fields on your planet, why is everything flickering?"

The mechanical voice of the translator could barely be heard over the storm, but John could pick up enough to understand Karkat was having a freak-out session. He tried to pat Karkat on the cheek, something he'd somewhat accidentally learned in their week long stay at the farm house calmed Karkat down, and did his best to reassure him over the sounds of the storm.

"Just calm down alright? We are going to be okay. You are going to be okay. It was a minor accident, everything is completely fine. I get that the storm is freaking you out, I'm guessing it's messing with your alien senses or something, but I promise it will pass. We just both need to get back in the car right now, and not be standing out here exposed to the elements."

Karkat glared at him. He'd decided at some point in their time together that he was going to allow John to be the touchy-feely person he seemed so determined to be. It was pleasant enough, it didn't _really_ mean anything, and it wasn't like anyone had to actually _know_ , but it still stirred up a great deal of feelings he really didn't like mulling over too much, primarily because his limited attempts at processing the raw emotions into coherent thought brought up facts about himself he didn't want to deal with in any way, shape, or form. He didn't pity a human. He didn't. REALLY. And he certainly did not want to think about the fact that he may actually totally pity a human while he was having a bit of a mild panic attack and was having trouble figuring out which way was what.

He settled for the first course of action his mind threw at him, which was to continue to completely lose his shit, and somewhat gently push John away.

"Get the fuck off me! Just leave me alone, I'm not getting back into the lifeless metal death trap. And why the fuck are you still carrying the bomb around?"

He snatched the bomb in question out of John's grasp before John could do much about it, holding it up above his head.

"Like we don't have the odds stacked highly against us anyways, do we really need to be tempting the wriggler bullshit fuck over machine that is fate any more than we really need to? What if this piece of feculant garbage finally decided to go off while you're busy cradling it like some kind of crippled wriggler?"

John frowned at Karkat, trying to reach for the bomb.

"You're the one who told me it would be a good idea to keep it in case we need to use it in the future in the first place! Stop being an asshole, give me the bomb, and get in the car! You're gonna get struck by lightning holding it up like that!"

Karkat growled in response, drawing his arm back,"Oh yeah?! Well guess what? Past Karkat is the stupidest, most heinously disgusting excuse for a sack of twitching flesh and barely functioning nerve cells to ever commit the grave crime against all of paradox space of existing! Fuck you and him both!"

John almost tried to chase after the bomb when Karkat proceeded to launch it into the distance with as much force as he could muster. It flew in a wide arc, finding itself fairly far away from the two, when the storm decided to offer a final 'fuck you' and shot a bolt of lighting directly through the metal container John had used to house his less than well thought out fertilizer and gasoline chemistry monstrosity.

If the lightning strike didn't scare the ever-loving shit out of both John and Karkat, the explosion certainly did. Karkat let out a scream, and John jumped a good couple feet in the air, instinctively clinging to Karkat. Karkat ended up hugging John back, the two simply standing in shock for a moment as they starred horrified in the direction of the explosion. The blast had been small and far enough away that they hadn't been hit by anything, but there was a crack in the pavement below where it had gone off, the actual lightning strike had essentially rendered Karkat's magnetically-based sense of spatial awareness blind, and the sound had been enough to just about temporarily deafen them both.

When they finally did begin to move Karkat gingerly shuffled his way over to the car, holding onto John and nearly falling into the ditch, and only set him down when they reached the muddy white vehicle. They both climbed into the vehicle in silence, shaky, and in Karkat's case clumsily.

The first one to finally speak was John, offering up a somewhat quiet,"Next time you tell me to stop the car I'll listen, okay?"

When he didn't get a response he looked over at the still shaking troll, curled up in the passenger seat, and settled for petting his rough wet hair until Karkat's shaking started to even out.

He couldn't help but wish that he could do more. He was still fairly shaken himself, who wouldn't be, but he could tell Karkat was considerably worse off. He knew that something about Karkat's troll-ness was making this a lot worse than it needed to be, and he couldn't help but remember getting sick as a kid and how awful it was. It probably didn't help that he'd been in a car accident and almost got struck by lightning. He suddenly had the urge to try to make Karkat feel better, to give him a hug or something.

It was only when he decided to act on that whim and shifted over to sitting on the median between the seats to wrap his arms around Karkat as well as he could in the awkward positions they were both in that it occurred to John that this all might be kind of really gay. It only became more obvious to him that this might be crossing some boundaries when Karkat immediately went rigid as a board.

John was about to push himself away and apologize when Karkat uncurled himself, and pulled John into his lap, returning the hug.

"John."

"Yeah?"

"If you ever tell anyone about this I will eviscerate you."

John laughed in response.

"You like hugs don't you Karkat?"

"Shut the fuck up. You're just something decently stable that makes me feel less like everything is spinning."

"Oh, yeah, you mentioned you weren't feeling good because of the storm. Is it an alien thing?"

"We can sense magnetic fields with our horns. It's a troll's main way of orienting themselves in the world, but with all this bullshit nook-biting fucking WEATHER my senses are all distorted and nonsensical. I feel like I'm getting thrown in random directions in space, it's nauseating and mildly panic inducing."

"That's actually really cool that you can sense magnetic fields or whatever, but that sucks it's making you all sick. Humans sense balance with, like, this gel stuff in their ears, so I guess I'm not bothered by the storm that much. I kind of thought horns were just touch sensitive because you never let me touch them."

"They are touch sensitive dipshit. I know it's slightly beyond the grasp of your tragically crippled and tiny excuse for a thought sponge, but they're capable of serving multiple functions."

"Well I guess you can't be in too bad shape if you're still able to insult me."

"My hate is a force so great and all encompassing the universe itself has grown around and developed within it. Should it ever fail, the very fabric of reality will crumble in upon itself in a great black pit of agony, despair, and people in desperate need of being informed of exactly how much I and every other important aspect of the known universe loathe their very existence. The day I'm too far gone to insult you, and your disgustingly punchable maw, is the day we all perish into oblivion."

John just chuckled, patting at Karkat's face.

"You're funny, Karkat."

He decided to not think too deeply about the pleasant warm feeling he got in his chest when Karkat hugged him tighter for a moment every time another flash of lightning struck down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello guys! Happy whatever great event you celebrate this fine 4/20. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's enjoying the story so far, and I hope you get a kick out of this chapter and those soon to come.


	13. Chapter 13

John awoke to a heavy troll chin digging painfully into the top of his head. He realized the two of them must have fallen asleep tangled together. When he tried to reach up to remove the offending jaw bone from his skull, John found his arms trapped: one jammed between Karkat's back and the car seat, the other pinned beneath one of Karkat's own arms, wrapped tightly around his waist. The troll in question was still fast asleep, letting out somewhat watery-sounding snores, and just pulled John into a slightly more crushing embrace when he tried to squirm free.

John settled for poking at the part of Karkat's arm he could reach, before head-butting him in the jaw .

“Karkat wake up, you're hurting my head.”

He got only a sleepy growl in response.

Karkat awoke slowly, bleary-eyed and confused. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why he'd just bit the inside of his mouth, or why he was waking up to the kind of warm contented feeling he hadn't felt since he'd stopped using sopor. He wanted to choke himself with his now bleeding tongue when he finally snapped into actual awareness of his surroundings and realized he'd fallen asleep hugging John to his chest like some wriggler cradling a stuffed lusus effigy.

It took a kick in the thigh for him to stop thinking about what a stupid bulge-sucker he was and actually release John in a hurried, jerky motion.

John simply crawled back to the driver’s seat, rubbing at his head. He could already tell he was going to have a headache for the rest of the day. He could see that it was still dark out, though the storm seemed to have passed, and quickly checked his watch, confirming it was about five in the morning. He let out a sigh, turning back to Karkat who'd pulled his legs up in the seat with him and was hiding his face in his knees.

“You feeling any better now that it’s not storming anymore?”

Karkat muttered something that the translator couldn't hear, forcing him to lift his head and reveal his now bright-red face.

“I'm not feeling like nauseous, dizzy, death anymore if that's what you're asking.”

“Why are you all red?”

Karkat didn't respond. Instead he just shoved his face in between his knees again.

John decided to not worry about it too much, absentmindedly patting Karkat on the back as he contemplated whether they should just start out driving again or wait for sunrise. He figured they might be safe; the storm had effectively taken Karkat out of rational commission, and he didn't think it would be a stretch to imagine the enemy trolls wouldn’t be very active with the weather acting up the way it had been. On the other hand it would probably be safer to wait until day break.

He ultimately decided that just waiting a bit would be the smarter idea, even if it was a lot more boring. It was pitch black out, and car headlights would draw attention. To be honest, the light on his watch he'd been using to see around the cab of the car was probably too bright. At that thought he quickly turned it off. All he could see now was the faint glimmer of golden eyes, glancing at him occasionally in the passenger seat.

“So, I think we're probably going to have to wait a while for it to stop being so dark.”

He could hear the soft shifting sound of Karkat nodding in response, uncharacteristically taciturn.

“What's wrong with you? You're never this quiet. Are you still sick?”

“I told you I'm not, butt-munch, I'm just ruing my sad, platonically pathetic show of unimaginable stupidity yesterday.” 

John just let out a good-natured laugh, and patted Karkat's head.

“Dude, you were sick. I totally understand. I guess you just aren't used to earth weather.”

“You see, this is the shit I'm talking about when I say you're disgustingly pale with me. It's sickening. You're a fucking whore, and it makes my bile sack turn just thinking of all the dumb saps that tool of flagellation you call a hand has gently papped into submission. Also fuck you; I'm the biggest embarrassment to Alternia to ever live. What kind of self respecting troll has a mental break-down because of some bullshit space weather and a minor vehicular accident, and then cuddles the dumb human alien he's stuck traveling with until they both fall asleep? Seriously?”

John just snorted out a laugh, flicking Karkat's head.

“A completely ridiculous and over-dramatic one, apparently. And for someone disgusted by my ‘whorish behavior’ or whatever, you sure seem to enjoy me touching you.”

Karkat really desperately hoped humans’ night-vision was as bad as he thought it was. He could _feel_ the heated blush on his face, and it was absolutely disgraceful.

“Get fucked Egbert. I do _not_ enjoy you constantly groping me like a very recently pubescent virgin who has just received the 'ok' from the nice teal-blood next door whose lusus is conveniently  absent from home. I'm simply capable of recognizing a hopeless fight, and trying to keep your grubby mammalian mitts off me is an unwinnable war if I've ever seen one.”

John just laughed at him harder, sarcastically muttering, “Sure, okay, the purring and cuddling are obviously signs you hate me. How could I have been so blind?” as he finally pulled his hands back to his own side of the car.

Karkat just growled out a soft, “The purring thing happened _one time_ ,” before letting the conversation drop entirely.

The two simply sat in a comfortable silence as they waited patiently for the sun to rise, John half-drifting off to sleep again and Karkat simply appreciating the ability to look at the outside world without the big obnoxious goggles he was forced to wear in the daylight. They were in a nice area, a big, flat, open expanse of grassy land that seemed to stretch on forever. Karkat had never seen a place so uninhabited, and honestly found it a peaceful sight. He was almost disappointed to notice the predawn light growing stronger. It was the sound of Karkat reaching to put the sun blockers on that told John it was time to go.

After managing to get past the ditch along the side of the road again, the drive that day turned out to be a fairly uneventful one. The highlights of the day had been coming across a small gas station to loot for lunch, finding only the heavily preserved hostess deserts edible, and Karkat nearly spilling a can of gasoline everywhere during a quick re-fueling session.

John had nearly snapped at him. He was starting to grow worried by their dwindling gas supply. He hadn't been able to figure out a way to get the gas out of the machines at the stations, and as far as he knew there wasn't much other way to get it. He knew there was some way to siphon fuel from the tanks of other cars, but he hadn't the faintest clue what it was. They might have to steal a car, something John wasn't sure he'd be able to do if he couldn't find the keys to it, or worse yet start moving on foot. He wasn't looking forward to the possibility of the second option. Karkat was able to walk a great deal better than he had been capable of earlier, but he still had a bad limp and had to stop constantly, and John wasn't sure how they'd carry the supplies they needed to stay alive.

John could feel that pointless anxiety he'd already been mulling over creeping up on him in full force when the sun started to set and they still had yet to find a place to stay the night. He figured they could spend another night in the car, but the vehicle seemed too open without the shield of a massive storm, and, seeing as most people hadn't had time to leave their homes when the invasion began, a car in the middle of nowhere looked incredibly suspicious to any stray groups of trolls that may come by.

He could practically feel the relief flood through him when he caught sight of the hotel up ahead. It was one of those middle-of-nowhere, motels that had ten rooms for rent at the most, all of the doors open to the outside, and a giant neon sign that probably wouldn't have worked well even if there had been electricity to power it. He turned into the parking lot, somewhat surprised to find two cars and a large truck already stationed there, and stopped next to the eighteen-wheeler near the road.

His hope that there might be actual survivors this time was crushed when John tried to get into the lobby and was met not only with an immovable front door, but with the same pungent reek of death the farmhouse had been filled with. It took a good deal of effort to not get overly upset about it. He decided it wasn't worth it to ask Karkat to pry the door open for him to see what was behind it.

Instead the troll used his sickle to force open one of the room doors, slicing through the cheap lock easily. John didn't even bother bringing in the sleeping bags, deciding that he and Karkat could just sleep on the bed. After banging the dust out of the sheets and pillows on the edge of a small, lop-sided desk in the room and nearly puking at the sight of Karkat casually eating a roach he found scurrying across the floor, John decided that he was pretty much done with the day and crawled under the covers to go to bed. With the comfort of actually sleeping in a real bed for the first time in well over a week it didn't take long for him to slip off into a mild sleep coma.

When he first felt the clawed hand roughly shaking at his shoulder he fully intended to ignore it completely and go right back to sleep. He could tell it wasn't daylight yet, the blinds covering the small window in the room were full of holes, and he was absolutely determined to enjoy his chance to sleep in an actual bed through the night. When he tried to turn away from the offending hand he was met with a crushing grip on his arm and a low growl. The two combined were enough to wake him up enough to actually try to process what was going on.

Karkat was hovering over him, looking half-angry and half-panicked. The troll kept looking over his shoulder towards the window, and if that wasn't enough to wake John the rest of the way up Karkat's complete lack of snarky comments did the trick. He sat up, rubbing the sleep from an eye, and opened his mouth to ask Karkat what was going, on only to receive a hand slapped over his mouth. Karkat held up his finger in front of his lips in a shushing gesture, and motioned for John to follow him.

Karkat very slightly pulled up the edge of a blind as he let go of John's face, giving a clear view to see through the grungy window. He'd been expecting to find something when he took a peek, but found only darkness. The moon wasn't particularly bright that night, and all he could make out were the vague shapes of cars in the parking lot. When he turned away from the window with a look of confusion, Karkat just pulled him close, away from the window and whispered as quietly as he could for the translator to still pick up what he'd said, “Trolls. We need to leave.”

John's blood ran cold as he shakily nodded, keeping completely silent. Karkat slowly moved them over to the door, guiding John by the arm. It was hard to stay calm as the door was opened painfully slowly. He couldn't actually see a thing aside from Karkat's big glowing alien eyes, and the thought that a troll could sneak up on him without his noticing was mildly disconcerting.

He could remember more than see that they'd parked the car about two or three doors down, past the big truck. Why hadn't they chosen the room right next to where he'd parked? Why had he parked on the other side of the eighteen-wheeler? What in the fresh hell had he been thinking?

He decided that it wasn't worth worrying about now. He'd know in the future to be better about stuff like that, if there was a future anyways.

John didn't even try to pretend he was grabbing Karkat out of anything other than fear. Sure he'd charged in with a hammer and hit Karkat in the face the first time he'd been met with trolls, but he'd been in his element, he'd been able to see, and he'd had the kind of courage only righteous fury could produce. Now he was scared, blind, and he had no intentions of releasing his death-grip on Karkat's arm. Karkat didn't question it, just glanced out the door, quickly trying to make sure the coast was clear. When he was decently satisfied there wasn't any immediate danger, he carefully lead them both out into the night air.

John's night-vision seemed to be adjusting as slowly as humanly possible, but he could pick up the sounds of a room near the lobby being absolutely destroyed. He wanted to ask Karkat how many trolls there were, how they'd gotten here, and if they could even outrun them if they were able to get to the car. He settled for following Karkat as quietly as he possibly could along the wall.

John felt like he'd won the lottery when they made it to the other side of the truck. Even if the trolls looting the room near the lobby came out odds are they wouldn't notice them until they started up the car. Even Karkat seemed to relax a moment before suddenly freezing, a suppressed growl welling up from deep in his throat.

John, who'd been slightly behind Karkat's back, peeked around his shoulder and froze himself when he caught sight of another pair of bright yellow eyes.

Karkat pulled out a sickle, moving towards the other troll and pushing John right into the front of his car, before snarling, “Get in the car and drive.”

John did as he was told, quickly feeling his way to the door handle and hopping inside, assuming Karkat would join him as soon as he started the car up. Instead he was met with the sounds of metal clanging against metal, and Karkat yelling at him to drive when he failed to immediately plant his foot on the gas. He reversed out of the spot as quickly as he could, turning back into the road.

He was now left facing the battle that was unfolding head on. Whatever troll had been rummaging around in the other room had apparently come out to help their team-mate, leaving Karkat trying to fight off two trolls at once. It didn't take a genius to figure out the fight wasn't going to last much longer. Karkat had been backed up into the open part of the lot only to be cut off by the second troll. He was surrounded, now bleeding heavily from several cuts along his arms, and was limping worse than he had been before. His only luck had come in the form of his enemies both being spear-wielders. So long as he focused entirely on deflecting their jabs with his sickles, he was able to stay alive and buy some time; the only thing he could do at that point.

Karkat had no real expectations of making it out of this one alive. As soon as he'd seen the troll waiting for them he'd realized he was probably going to be fighting a hopeless battle. He was injured, odds were the other troll he'd seen crawl out of the scuttlebuggy was going to run over as soon as it heard the fight begin, and he was pretty sure John didn't actually have his hammer on him. He'd realized fairly quickly he had two options: either try to fight with John and let them both be murdered spectacularly, or fight by himself long enough for John to get the hell away from there. He'd never been one to aim for the route of greatest bloodshed, and hadn't thought a bit about shoving John towards their only chance of escape.

It didn't even occur to John that leaving Karkat behind was an option. Instead John did the only thing he could think to do, honking his horn before turning his headlights on full blast. The two enemy trolls who's turned to look were left momentarily blinded, the light scorching even if it wasn't riddled with the ultraviolet rays that would have left their corneas burned beyond any hope of healing. Karkat, who'd actually known John's car had lights on it, had been smart enough to shield his eyes, and took the opportunity he'd been given to lash out blindly, slicing clean through the taller of the two's face. The troll crumpled to the ground, its partner letting out a hiss of fury at the pained sound it let out. The enemy still standing made a charge for Karkat, who had his back turned to them, and John did the only logical thing to run through his mind. He switched to drive, and slammed his foot on the gas.

He was incredibly happy this troll was smaller and skinnier than the other, as even it's much smaller frame was enough to dent the hell out of John's car and nearly stop him completely. Karkat jumped in through the passenger side door, half landing on John, and the two sped out of the area as quickly as they could.

After a moment John turned his lights back off, asking Karkat to just tell him if he was about to hit something.

He received only a quiet “okay” in response. Partly because Karkat was too tired and injured to really want to expend the energy it would take to talk more, and partly because he honestly didn't know what to say about John not just leaving him behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note to anyone confused about what a scuttlebuggy may be. It's the troll equivalent to a car, though we probably won't be getting a look at the actual differences between the vehicles until a bit later.
> 
> Also an apology for not updating last week. Combine a bad stomach bug with finals and you get one hell of a time. We should be back to a regular update schedule now.
> 
> And last, but certainly not least, a big thank you to Troodon for helping me beta this chapter! You rock!


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